Society for Medical Decision Making
The Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM) is a global not-for-profit professional research organization dedicated to promoting rational and systematic approaches to decision making that will improve the health and clinical care of individuals and assist health policy formation. The cornerstones of our mission are multidisciplinary scholarship, the development of applications that benefit patients and society, the evaluation of such applications, and dissemination.
The SMDM vision is that systematic proactive approaches should be used for decision making in health care. It promotes an integrated approach to health care decision making based on multiple perspectives and expertise from multiple disciplines. Optimal communication among those involved in healthcare decisions will facilitate informed and shared decision-making by policy-makers, physicians, patients, and the public.
SMDM is the leading society for studying and advancing decision sciences in health, including incorporation of patients’ values and preferences. We bring together experts from numerous fields, including economics, psychology, sociology, education, communication, mathematics, organizational theory, clinical epidemiology, public health, and clinical medicine. The mission of SMDM, reflecting this interdisciplinary approach, is “to improve health outcomes through the advancement of proactive systematic approaches to clinical decision-making and policy formation in health care by providing a scholarly forum that connects and educates researchers, providers, policy makers, and the public”. SMDM annual North American and Biennial European Meetings are the major catalysts for scholarly exchange. The meetings are forums for presentation of novel research of various methodologies, including decision analysis, meta-analysis, predictive modeling, disease progression modeling, cognitive psychology, shared decision making, quality of life assessment, utility elicitation, health outcomes assessment, cost-effectiveness analysis, health economics, pharmacoeconomics, technology assessment, evidence-based medicine and medical informatics, among others.
SMDM publishes two peer-reviewed journals: Medical Decision Making focuses on methodological work and systematic approaches to decision making, and MDM Policy & Practice, an open access journal, focuses on applications to problems facing health care decision-makers, including patients, providers, producers, and payers. A major initiative of our editorial office is to train and incorporate patient reviewers into our manuscript review process.