An international team of researchers from Columbia University’s Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics program, which seeks to develop valuable insights through large-scale analysis of health data, has compiled a data set of electronic health records of 250 million patients from four countries to compare treatment plans for hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and depression. The researchers compared the types of drugs prescribed in each treatment plan, as well as the order they were prescribed, and examined the outcomes of these treatments, revealing substantial variations in how doctors approach these conditions. For example, 24 percent of hypertension patients received a unique sequence of drugs, suggesting the international medical community disagrees about how to best treat these common conditions.
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