About CERTs
Annual Report Year 3
AHRQ Letter | Steering Committee Letter | Introduction | CERTs Progress | Putting Our Heads Together | The CERTs Organization | Peer-Reviewed Publications | Partners
Introduction
The Centers for Education & Research on Therapeutics (CERTs), administered by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), is a unique network of seven centers focused on improving the use of medical therapies. The CERTs harness the power of collaboration across all sectors, public and private, industry and government, academia and business, to find the best possible use of existing medicines and medical devices and then spread the word of these improvements to those who can put them to use.
With over 130 projects under the CERTs umbrella to date, our research and education efforts range from relatively straightforward questions of “Who is at the highest risk for arthritis?” to randomized trials of new, multifaceted educational interventions in congestive heart failure. CERTs efforts run the gamut from clinical studies to testing teaching methods to policy-changing outcomes research.
Central to the CERTs goal of being a national resource is responsiveness to national needs. The mix of public and private partnerships and the combined expertise of seven centers with both academic and business leaders give CERTs the flexibility to adapt their research to the most pressing healthcare matters as they emerge.
Concerns about patient safety, especially regarding the use of new medicines, have occupied the media spotlight in the past year. The complexities of prescribing, dosing, administering, and monitoring medications are daunting and create a great potential for inadvertent misuse. From the beginning, improving the safe use of therapies has been central to the goals of CERTs.
Reducing risk to patients is integral to the CERTs mission, and the centers have responded. More than 70 projects focused on ensuring the safe use of therapeutics have been completed by the CERTs or are still ongoing. Several more will begin in the near future. The vast majority of these focus on the safe administration and monitoring of medications.
In this report, you'll find some highlights of the centers' successes in therapeutic safety. From tracking prescribing patterns of some of the most commonly used antibiotics to protecting the most vulnerable of patient populations, the CERTs have taken great strides in ensuring the safety of patients while retaining the benefits of today's most effective medicines.
All of this research is useless without the effective dissemination of results, however. Our education efforts seek to target information to the most appropriate audience, tailoring it for the speediest and most effective teaching. Whether they are sweeping national endeavors or more tightly focused seminars and online learning modules for particular therapeutic areas, the CERTs education programs can be customized to fit any need.