News Release

HHS enlists Archimedes Inc. to expand government's use of health care modeling

HHS agencies can now use ARCHeS tool to conduct large scale analyses to evaluate health spending, treatment, and effectiveness

Business Announcement

Burness

(San Francisco CA and Princeton NJ) -- To put high-powered mathematical analytics in the hands of its agencies, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has contracted with Archimedes Inc., a healthcare modeling company based in San Francisco CA. The contract will put the Archimedes model at the fingertips of its agencies, enabling them to research, analyze, and evaluate the effects of specific health care interventions more quickly and accurately.

The Archimedes Model, developed initially with support from Kaiser Permanente, is the most advanced mathematical modeling tool available to answer complex questions on health and health care. Under this contract, HHS will make a new web-based interface called the Archimedes Healthcare Simulator (ARCHeS) available to its agencies, including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the National Heart, Lung & Blood Institute and the Food & Drug Administration in order to help better:

  • Analyze prevention activities and management of chronic conditions for patients;
  • Design guidelines, performance measures, and incentive programs, such as pay-for-performance;
  • Assess technologies and compare the effectiveness of different treatments;
  • Design clinical trials;
  • Analyze and improve health processes;
  • Forecast the costs of healthcare; and
  • Estimate the cost effectiveness of interventions.

HHS' ability to offer agencies widespread access to this revolutionary tool in clinical care and research was spurred by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Pioneer Portfolio, which, in 2007, provided a $15.6 million grant to support the creation of ARCHeS, which makes the Archimedes Model more accessible and affordable for public policymakers and nonprofit users.

"When we initially made this grant, I said that the development of ARCHeS would usher in a new era in medical decision-making that we believe has the potential to transform health and health care," said Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, MD, president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. "By getting ARCHeS in the hands of HHS and all of its agencies, we've taken a very big step toward realizing that potential. Our goal has always been to create access to this innovation for the public policymakers and researchers best positioned to use it to inform decisions that will improve health and health care for all Americans. We now see that happening."

"The quality and cost of health care are determined by decisions made by policymakers, physicians and others. To make those decisions wisely, decision makers need to know the consequences of the different options they face. For a high proportion of decisions, the only feasible way to get the needed information is to use mathematical models that integrate existing evidence, and are validated against evidence," said David Eddy, MD, PhD, Founder and Chief Medical Officer of Archimedes. "This agreement with HHS puts the analytical power of advanced health care modeling on the desks of decision makers in the federal government. By combining this tool with their own insights and experience, decision makers will be able to understand much better the effects of different policies, and be able to design policies that achieve the twin goals of improving quality and controlling costs."

In one of a number of important analyses already performed by Archimedes, Kaiser Permanente used forecasts from the model as the impetus to launch a program to provide a bundle of aspirin, lovastatin (a cholesterol-lowering drug), and lisinopril (a blood pressure-reducing drug), to high-risk members. This analysis was used in informing the implementation of Kaiser Permanente's ALL/PHASE program. The result was a more than 60% reduction in heart attacks and strokes over a two-year period.

As a result of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the use of modeling and simulation platforms is in high demand for policymakers and researchers. Both of these laws include new requirements for use of data in the design of health benefits; comparative effectiveness of quality, cost, and outcomes; and evaluation of population health efforts. In March, the federal government launched a major research initiative in big data computing for a number of agencies, including the National Institutes of Health.

"The federal government sees a growing need across all of its agencies for innovative resources to aid in research, policy analysis and evaluation," said Todd Park, former Chief Technology Officer for HHS, and newly appointed Chief Technology Officer to the United States. "We're excited that ARCHeS will now be available to staff across the Department of Health and Human Services. It gives us an important new tool to analyze a wide variety of health policy questions and quickly compare different scenarios and outcomes."

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About the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation focuses on the pressing health and health care issues facing our country. As the nation's largest philanthropy devoted exclusively to improving the health and health care of all Americans, the Foundation works with a diverse group of organizations and individuals to identify solutions and achieve comprehensive, meaningful and timely change. Projects in the Pioneer Portfolio are future-oriented and look beyond conventional thinking to explore solutions at the cutting edge of health and health care. For more information, visit our website at www.rwjf.org/pioneer.

About Archimedes

Archimedes Inc. is a healthcare modeling organization. Its core technology – the Archimedes Model – is a clinically realistic, mathematical model of human physiology, diseases, interventions and healthcare systems. The Model is continually validated by comparing the results of simulated trials to the results of real clinical trials and cohort studies. Through innovations such as ARCHeS and IndiGO, Archimedes helps people understand the implications of their decisions and for the last 15 years has been relied upon to answer complex, real world questions for health plans, health systems, medical groups, pharmaceutical companies, researchers, and other organizations in the United States and Europe. Archimedes, a Kaiser Permanente Innovation, is based in San Francisco, California.

For more information about the contract, go to: http://bit.ly/ARCHeSModel


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