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High-quality clinical research is a benchmark characteristic of modern medical institutions. World-class prestigious medical centers have strong programs in clinical research and successfully integrate clinical research with clinical practice. Indeed, clinical research is considered necessary to successfully applying medical knowledge and to bridging the gap between basic research and problem solving in patient care. At the same time, there are substantial barriers to the development of successful clinical research programs. Many centers lack the appropriate research infrastructure and the clinical and population data to test innovative research hypotheses and to establish competitive research programs. Even highly successful third-level medical centers often lack the ability to comprehensively evaluate the natural history and prognosis of many medical conditions due to the lack of a community frame for their practice base and to the lack of pre-disease data of patients. It is also important for medical centers to identify unique strengths of their practice and hospital characteristics so that they can develop original and competitive research programs.
The collaboration between SMC and JH on Clinical Epidemiology is designed to develop a high impact Center for Clinical Epidemiology (CCE) that provides the methodological and technical expertise required by SMC clinicians to set up observational study designs, focus the study framework, solve the methodological challenges that arise in clinical research, conduct the actual research, and support the preparation of publications in high-profile medical journals. The CCE benchmarked follow the model of the Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology, and Clinical Research at JH, a highly successful research-oriented center that combines the experience of clinicians with expert in clinical epidemiology methods.