News | May 24, 2011

Archimedes, Inc. Improves Accessibility Of Healthcare Simulation Model Through Launch Of ARCHeS Innovator

ARCHeS (ARChimedes Healthcare Simulator) allows decision-makers to reliably and quickly run queries on health and economic outcomes of interventions and treatments

Archimedes Inc., a healthcare modeling company, recently announced the launch of a new web interface, ARCHeS Innovator, which will give health experts direct access to many of the features of the Archimedes Model.

ARCHeS Innovator enables researchers and decision makers to set up questions, submit the questions to the Archimedes Model, a large-scale simulation model of health and healthcare, and analyze the results in the Archimedes Outcomes Analyzer, which was released last October. Users can set up questions by specifying particular populations, interventions, and outcomes, in the same way that researchers set up clinical trials or demonstration programs. The ARCHeS Innovator provides web-based communication between the user and the Archimedes team, enabling delivery of results within one to two weeks.

ARCHeS Innovator has been made possible by a grant awarded to Archimedes in 2007 by the Pioneer Portfolio of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), and is being introduced at the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) 16th Annual International Meeting that is being held May 21-25, 2011, in Baltimore, Maryland.

"The Archimedes Model is the most comprehensive and clinically detailed model of healthcare to help people understand the effects of different options on clinical, administrative, and financial outcomes, so that they can make the best informed decisions possible," said David M. Eddy, M.D., Ph.D., Archimedes' founder. "ARCHeS Innovator makes our simulation model accessible to a broad group of healthcare experts and can be used to support a wide variety of decisions relating to such things as health economics and outcomes research, comparative effectiveness analyses, guidelines, quality and performance measurement, and clinical trial design."

"Public policy-makers who make healthcare decisions that affect tens of millions of Americans often lack the detailed, patient-specific information needed to evaluate the effectiveness of various treatments, procedures and protocols," said Nancy Barrand, senior adviser for program development for RWJF. "By providing access to the Archimedes Model, we can change that. We supported the creation of the ARCHeS interface to put this critical information in the hands of the government agencies and nonprofits best positioned to use it for the broader public good."

ARCHeS Innovator currently covers conditions, treatments, and outcomes related to cardio-metabolic risk, including coronary artery disease, stroke, diabetes and its complications, obesity, hypertension, dyslipidemia, and smoking. Archimedes is working to expand the ARCHeS Innovator to include additional indications beyond cardio-metabolic while also developing features that help deliver results even faster.

"The ARCHeS Innovator is currently used by several non-profit and pharmaceutical organizations, enabling users to create scenarios that represent programs that are under consideration to better assess health outcomes, and costs, based on existing clinical and economic information," Dr. Eddy continued. "ARCHeS Innovator has the ability to save considerable time, energy and money when determining factors critical to project development and other decisions."

For more information about the ISPOR meeting, please visit www.ispor.org/Events/Index.aspx?eventId=35.

To learn more about ARCHeS Innovator visit www.archimedesmodel.com/arches-innovator.

About Archimedes
Archimedes Inc. is an independent healthcare modeling organization. Its core technology - the Archimedes Model - is a carefully validated and calibrated mathematical model of human physiology, diseases, interventions and healthcare systems.

The Archimedes Model is designed to help people understand the implications of their decisions and for the last 15 years has been relied upon to answer complex, real world questions for health plans, pharmaceutical companies, researchers, and other organizations. Archimedes, a Kaiser Permanente Innovation, is based in San Francisco, California. For more information, visit www.archimedesmodel.com.

About the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and its Pioneer Portfolio
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation focuses on the pressing health and healthcare issues facing our country. As the nation's largest philanthropy devoted exclusively to improving the health and healthcare of all Americans, the Foundation works with a diverse group of organizations and individuals to identify solutions and achieve comprehensive, meaningful and timely change. Projects in the Pioneer Portfolio are future-oriented and look beyond conventional thinking to explore solutions at the cutting edge of health and healthcare. For more information, visit www.rwjf.org/pioneer.

SOURCE: Archimedes Inc.