Observational Studies in Healthcare: Are They Any Good?

This month we have Andy Gelman discussing Stan, the new Bayesian sampler.

Unfortunately, Dr. Gelman can no longer make the talk. We have found a worthy replacement, however, Dr. David Madigan, Chair of Statistics at Columbia University. He will be discussing observational studies in healthcare.

About the talk:

Observational healthcare data, such as administrative claims and electronic health records, play an increasingly prominent role in healthcare. Pharmacoepidemiologic studies in particular routinely estimate temporal associations between medical product exposure and subsequent health outcomes of interest, and such studies influence prescribing patterns and healthcare policy more generally. Some authors have questioned the reliability and accuracy of such studies, but few previous efforts have attempted to measure their performance.

The Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP, http://omop.org (http://omop.org/)) has conducted a series of experiments to empirically measure the performance of various observational study designs with regard to predictive accuracy for discriminating between true drug effects and negative controls. In this talk, I describe the past work of the Partnership, explore opportunities to expand the use of observational data to further our understanding of medical products, and highlight areas for future research and development.

Pizza starts at 6:15, Dr. Gelman Madigan begins at 7 and the bar will follow. Right before the talk we will do giveaways including books and a free pass to Strata.

Please RSVP early to help with seating arrangements.

A big thanks to Dr. Madigan for filling in on such short notice.