Overview

Patients are often faced with confusing and difficult situations, and clinicians don't always know how to respond. How might clinicians and patients partner to find the best healthcare solution for each individual situation?

Investigators with the Knowledge and Evaluation Research (KER) Unit study these challenges and work with patients and care teams to answer these questions.

The Knowledge and Evaluation Research Unit was founded in 2004 by principal investigator Victor M. Montori, M.D., to research the best ways to advance evidence-based patient-centered care. This includes interventions that promote shared decision-making, reduce the burden of treatment on patient lives, help people recover their health and enable flourishing.

Investigators in our laboratory are united by three driving principles:

• Patient centeredness. We ask questions and measure outcomes that patients value. Patients often have several conditions for which they're seeking the best healthcare solutions, so our work spans many different diseases and conditions.
• Integrity. In addition to scientific and humanistic integrity, integrity to us means that our research team never accepts funding from for-profit healthcare corporations. This principle avoids the confusion of having an alternative explanation — beyond science — for our findings and recommendations.
• Generosity. We collaborate broadly, welcome visitors, and share our work freely and widely, aiming for open and universal access to our research and tools.

All of this comes together to help ensure that patient goals for healthcare are advanced with the smallest burden on patients' lives, and with particular concern for patients with multiple chronic conditions.

About Dr. Montori

Dr. Montori is a leading teacher and advocate of evidence-based medicine and patient-centered care. In addition to being one of the key researchers in the Knowledge and Evaluation Research Unit lab, Dr. Montori is an endocrinologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, focusing on improving the care of patients with diabetes and related complications. He is also a professor of medicine at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science in Rochester. He has the distinction of being the Robert H. and Susan M. Rewoldt Professor of Endocrinology Honoring Daniel L. Hurley, M.D. Dr. Montori is among the 1% of most-cited scientists in clinical medicine and in social science in the world.