About this Research Topic
Patients demand evidence-based medicine for better diagnosis and treatment. Before most treatments are approved, they require robust evidence, which usually comes from Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs) — the gold-standard epidemiological study — although systematic reviews, and other well-constructed study types can also yield enough evidence for or against treatments. However, health system managers, national and local policy makers and healthcare professionals can face several obstacles when utilizing this evidence.
Even if randomised controlled trials yield the best evidence on the effectiveness of a particular treatment, they are rarely used in the older populations for several reasons. Older people tend to have co-morbidities or co-treatments and are usually excluded from RCTs for ethical and methodological reasons. In addition, the treatment effectiveness is impacted by low adherence rates and therapeutic inertia in clinical practice. Therefore, there is growing interest in using observational studies based on real-world data, where the data is usually routinely collected from various sources. These clinical epidemiology studies could complement the results of RCTs, helping to monitor post-marketing long-term cost-effectiveness and safety, anddevelop guidelines and decision support tools for the use of treatments in clinical practice.
Aging is having a global and significant impact on health, finance, economy, and the society and having it is crucial to have an evidence-based approach to understand the causes for their diseases and prevent them or treat them.
In this Research Topic, we welcome opinions, reviews and systematic reviews and original research article types.
Topics may include, but are by no means limited to:
- Essential tools and concepts in evidence-based medicine applied to aging populations
- Evidence-based epidemiological and clinical studies in aging populations
- Application of AI and digital markers for early detection of disease
- Identification of intrinsic capacity, functional ability, and environment in elderly population
- Tools, algorithms, guidelines and policies to facilitate healthy aging
- Effect of deprescribing/medicine optimisation on geriatric syndromes
- Innovative intervention programs for preventing falls, fractures, and frailty
Even if randomised controlled trials yield the best evidence on the effectiveness of a particular treatment, they are rarely used in the older populations for several reasons. Older people tend to have co-morbidities or co-treatments and are usually excluded from RCTs for ethical and methodological reasons. In addition, the treatment effectiveness is impacted by low adherence rates and therapeutic inertia in clinical practice. Therefore, there is growing interest in using observational studies based on real-world data, where the data is usually routinely collected from various sources. These clinical epidemiology studies could complement the results of RCTs, helping to monitor post-marketing long-term cost-effectiveness and safety, anddevelop guidelines and decision support tools for the use of treatments in clinical practice.
Aging is having a global and significant impact on health, finance, economy, and the society and having it is crucial to have an evidence-based approach to understand the causes for their diseases and prevent them or treat them.
In this Research Topic, we welcome opinions, reviews and systematic reviews and original research article types.
Topics may include, but are by no means limited to:
- Essential tools and concepts in evidence-based medicine applied to aging populations
- Evidence-based epidemiological and clinical studies in aging populations
- Application of AI and digital markers for early detection of disease
- Identification of intrinsic capacity, functional ability, and environment in elderly population
- Tools, algorithms, guidelines and policies to facilitate healthy aging
- Effect of deprescribing/medicine optimisation on geriatric syndromes
- Innovative intervention programs for preventing falls, fractures, and frailty
Keywords: Ageing, public health, clinical epidemiology
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