Press Release

Massachusetts General Hospital and Healthwise Establish Informed Medical Decisions Program

Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Healthwise today announced the creation of the Informed Medical DecisionsTM Program (IMDP) within MGH’s Health Decisions Sciences Center.

BOISE, ID, March 29, 2017—Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Healthwise today announced the creation of the Informed Medical DecisionsTM Program (IMDP) within MGH’s Health Decisions Sciences Center. The IMDP has been established with a $2 million, three-year grant from Healthwise, a nonprofit organization focused on helping patients make better decisions about their health. The vision for the IMDP is to inform and amplify the patient’s voice in health care decisions. The program’s core areas of investigation will include research to:

  • Prove the value of tools and solutions for patient engagement.
  • Extend the science of measuring decision quality.
  • Assess optimal ways to ensure people are informed and involved in their health and health care.

Michael J. Barry, MD, will return to MGH full time to direct the IMDP. To take on this role, he will leave Healthwise, where he has served as its chief science officer and president of the Informed Medical Decisions Foundation, its research and advocacy division.

Dr. Barry’s research interests include decision analysis, health status measurement, clinical quality improvement and the use of decision aids. He leads clinical trials and patient outcome studies, including the Patient Outcome Research Team for Prostatic Diseases.

Dr. Barry is a Master of the American College of Physicians. He previously served as chief of the General Medicine Unit at MGH. Dr. Barry continues to practice adult primary care at MGH and is a member of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.

Dr. Barry earned his BS in biology from Trinity College and his MD from the University of Connecticut School of Medicine.

About the Health Decision Sciences Center

The new IMDP will be housed within the Health Decision Sciences Center (HDSC), part of MGH’s Department of Medicine, Division of General Internal Medicine, directed by Karen Sepucha, PhD. The HDSC is committed to improving the quality of decisions made by patients and health care providers by promoting conversations and systems of care that value the expertise of patients and families, clinicians and the best available clinical evidence. It oversees the distribution of patient decision aids, clinician training in shared decision making skills and use of decision quality measures to promote shared decision making in medical encounters. www.massgeneral.org/decisionsciences

About Massachusetts General Hospital

Massachusetts General Hospital, a leading academic medical center located in the heart of Boston, is consistently ranked among the top hospitals in America. Mass General is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, where nearly all of its staff physicians serve on the faculty. Mass General trains the next generation of medical and scientific leaders and conducts the largest hospital-based research program in the United States. www.massgeneral.org

About Healthwise

Healthwise is a nonprofit organization with a mission to help people make better health decisions. People have turned to Healthwise information nearly 2 billion times to learn how to do more for themselves, ask for the care they need, and say “no” to the care they don’t need. Healthwise partners with hospitals, electronic medical record (EMR) providers, health plans, care management companies, and health websites to provide up-to-date, evidence-based information to the people they serve. www.healthwise.org. 1.800.706.9646.