About Our Research

Our Vision and Mission

The Pharmacotherapy Outcomes Research Center (PORC) was established in 2002 at the University of Utah's College of Pharmacy in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Our vision is to be recognized internationally for outstanding contribution to improved patient care via outcomes research and assessment.

Our mission is to facilitate the interaction of academia and patient care systems in the conduct of outcomes research, the presentation and publication of results, training of healthcare professionals and facilitating the utilization of outcomes research information to improve patient care. We contract with the pharmaceutical industry, foundations, managed care organizations and government to conduct the following types of projects:

Quality of Life studies
Patient Registries and observational studies
Resource utilization and cost analyses
Economic modeling
Cost-effectiveness studies
Retrospective analyses
Development and review of AMCP Economic Dossiers

Various patient data sources are utilized for these study types including:

University of Utah Hospital and Clinics Network, which utilizes an Electronic Medical Record (EMR) and centralized billing system
Managed care research databases including staff and group models, preferred provider networks and PBMs
Access to several national integrated patient databases representing up to 24 millions managed care lives
TOPS (total outcomes in pain symptoms) database of 5000+ patients with QOL assessment
Western States Medicaid Consortium of Medicaid data across Utah and several other states
National EMR database on over 2,000,000 patient lives including lab results and other outcome measures
Real-time retail pharmacy data for persistency and compliance studies

The Center's personnel have expertise in health economics, modeling, various clinical subspecialties, drug information, statistical analysis and programming, psychometrics, and database management.