Tools

SHAPING MEDICAL SCIENCE

Stiftung IHF’s statutory purpose is implemented by supporting a variety of tools. Studies investigate experimentally whether a certain therapy is superior to another. The treatment for the individual patient is randomly chosen among the therapies to be compared. Approval and conduct of the study are subject to strict controls by authorities and ethics commissions. The high degree of therapy standardization – which is indispensable to allow a comparison – makes studies an expensive endeavor.

Registry – Comprehensive Observations

Registries document the patients‘ real-world treatments. No attempt is made to interfere with individual therapies. Registries are perfectly suitable to investigate the transferability of study results to clinical practice in a large number of patients. The costs incurred per patient enrolled are significantly lower than those in trials. However, due to the huge number of patients, the overall budgets might be equally high.

Fair Comparison for Responsible Improvements

Within a registry, the participating private practices or hospitals are made available benchmarks at regular intervals. Benchmarks are reports comparing one center with the others. This enables physicians to determine whether their individual indication for a therapy, their complication rates, and their long-term outcomes for the patients are within average. This improves a center’s internal quality and benefits the patient.

The scientific findings of a project are to be published. Therefore, the foundation supports the production of publications based on existing databases from registries and studies. The papers are usually publicized in specialist journals or the findings are presented at expert symposiums.