“Registries are unique in that they allow researchers to examine patient subsets to precisely determine how individual patients benefit from each intervention. The process is cost-effective and allows researchers to gather evidence on a much larger scale than in a typical clinical trial.””
Einstein Named as BraveNet Coordinating Center
The Bravewell Collaborative has named Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University to lead the Bravewell Integrative Medicine Research Network (BraveNet), a practice-based consortium of 14 integrative medicine centers in the United States. As the coordinating center for BraveNet, the New York City medical school will manage the network’s Patients Receiving Integrative Medicine Interventions Effectiveness Registry (PRIMIER), the first patient registry for integrative medicine.
“BraveNet has helped establish a strong future for evidence-based research in integrative healthcare,” said Christy Mack, president of Bravewell. “Albert Einstein College of Medicine has a long-standing commitment to integrative medicine and is well-situated to ensure the success of PRIMIER.”
The Bravewell Collaborative established BraveNet in 2007 as the nation’s first practice-based research network for integrative medicine to study the benefits of an integrative approach to health care. As part of this mission, BraveNet created PRIMIER, a data registry project intended to uniformly collect patient-reported outcomes, provider input and extracted electronic health record data into a large dataset. This dataset can be used for quality improvement, evidence-based research and determination of best practices.
M. Diane McKee, MD, MS, co-director of research in the Department of Family and Social Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Medical Center, noted the value of registry databases such as PRIMIER: “Registries are unique in that they allow researchers to examine patient subsets to precisely determine how individual patients benefit from each intervention. The process is cost-effective and allows researchers to gather evidence on a much larger scale than in a typical clinical trial.”
The PRIMIER registry provides foundational knowledge on how integrative medicine is being used in real-world settings. This knowledge will ultimately inform decision-making in clinical settings and serve as the basis for future clinical trials. The hope is that PRIMIER will expand over time, including more public as well as private integrative medicine centers, to create a national registry that will help improve the health and well-being of patients and provide a framework for discovering best practices in integrative medicine.
“Over the past 12 years, The Bravewell Collaborative has made an unparalleled commitment to furthering the field of integrative medicine,” said Benjamin Kligler, MD, MPH, associate professor in the Department of Family and Social Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. “I’m excited for the opportunity to continue this work and co-lead such an important program. The network and its research endeavors will continue to help shape the future of health care.
About Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University
Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University is one of the nation's premier centers for research, medical education and clinical investigation. During the 2014-2015 academic year, Einstein is home to 742 M.D. students, 212 Ph.D. students, 102 students in the combined MD/PhD program and 292 postdoctoral research fellows. The College of Medicine has more than 2,000 full-time faculty members located on the main campus and at its clinical affiliates. In 2014, Einstein faculty received $158 million in awards from the National Institutes of Health, which also funds major research centers at Einstein in aging, intellectual development disorders, diabetes, cancer, clinical and translational research, liver disease and AIDS. Other areas where the College of Medicine is focused include developmental brain research, neuroscience, cardiac disease and initiatives to eliminate or reduce ethnic and racial health disparities. The college’s partnership with Montefiore Medical Center, its University Hospital and academic medical center, advances clinical and translational research to accelerate the pace at which new discoveries become the treatments and therapies that benefit patients. Through its extensive affiliations with Montefiore, Jacobi Medical Center (Einstein's founding hospital) and five other hospital systems in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Long Island and Manhattan, Einstein runs one of the largest residency and fellowship training programs in the medical and dental professions in the United States. For more information, please visit www.einstein.yu.edu, read our blog, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook and view us on YouTube.