Welcome to the IU Center for Aging Research website. The April issue of the IU Geriatrics e-news is available online… The National Institute on Aging has funded Principal Investigator Malaz Boustani, MD, MPH, for “Pharmacological Management of Delirium,” an R01 that will evaluate the efficacy of a multi-component pharmacological intervention in reducing delirium severity and duration and subsequently decrease ICU and hospital length of stay. Read more... Read the 2008-2009 IU-CAR Annual Report on "Partnering in Community-Based Participatory Research." Read the IU GERIATRICS Spring 2010 newsletter for summaries and peer-reviewed references for five collaborative care models developed and tested by IU Geriatrics.   Jesse Stewart, PhD, discusses his research on the June 20, 2010 episode of Sound Medicine. Depression and inflammation are linked--which is the cause and which is the effect? Listen… to Sound Medicine.

PROSPECT and COMET-AD Combine Investigator, Environment and Research Strengths

A new collaboration among scientists from the IU Center for Aging Research, the Medical Informatics Program at Regenstrief Institute and the Division of Clinical Pharmacology will enhance the existing information technology infrastructure in Central Indiana to improve the nation’s capacity to conduct comparative effectiveness research (CER). The collaboration is an AHRQ-funded R01 called Indiana PROSPECT.
	COMET-AD Comparative Effectiveness Research Trial of Alzheimer’s Disease Drugs Indiana PROSPECT Prospective Outcome Systems Using Patient-Specific Electronic Data to Compare Tests and Therapies IDND Indianapolis Discovery Network for Dementia INPC Indiana Network for Patient Care eMR-ABC electronic Medical Record for Aging Brain Care	To demonstrate the potential of enhanced technology within PROSPECT, IU-CAR will conduct a clinical trial of medication treatment for behavioral symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. Called COMET-AD, the CER will be conducted in five memory care practices representing four health care systems. All of the medications are FDA-approved for Alzheimer’s. Existing clinical data repositories and clinical informatics tools will be enhanced to carry out the clinical trial. For example, two new research databases will be developed from the current INPC database, including one with de-identified data accessible to outside researchers for queries, hypothesis generation and other comparative effectiveness research activities.
To facilitate collaborative care across multiple sites of care, the new infrastructure will incorporate the eMR-ABC--a robust stand-alone web-based patient registry, psychosocial need monitor, clinical decision-support, and case management tool for care of patients with cognitive impairment. Collectively, the new infrastructure will capture, store, and track a broader array of health care outcomes important to patients and their caregivers. It will also support providers’, caregivers’ and researchers’ increasing need to work in teams by providing new tools for communication and collaborative care management. IU-CAR investigators working on the clinical trial are Malaz Boustani, MD, MPH, Chris Callahan, MD, Hugh Hendrie, MB, ChB, DSc, and Siu Hui, PhD.