Getting to 'smart' health care.

As the United States struggles with improving the return on its sizable health care investment and consumers become increasingly involved in health care decisions, interest in comparative effectiveness will rise because of its relevance to value, personalized health care, quality, and cost containment. Advances in biomedicine and health information technology present exciting opportunities for providing timely, relevant information about the comparative effectiveness of health care services. Successful growth will require a transparent, participatory approach and new partnerships between the public and private sectors to achieve the goal of producing valid evidence for decision making.