David M. Eddy (born 1941) is an American physician, mathematician, and healthcare analyst who has done seminal work in mathematical modeling of diseases, clinical practice guidelines, and evidence-based medicine.
[1][2][3] Four highlights of his career have been summarized by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences: "more than 25 years ago, Eddy wrote the seminal paper on the role of guidelines in medical decision-making, the first Markov model applied to clinical problems, and the original criteria for coverage decisions; he was the first to use and publish the term 'evidence-based'.
Other positions include Chief Scientist for Blue Cross Blue Shield's Technology and Coverage Program and Medical Advisory Panel from 1984 to 2005,[3][7][8] Director of the World Health Organization's Collaborating Center for Research in Cancer Policy from 1984 to 1996,[9][10] Senior Advisor to Kaiser Permanente from 1991 to 2006,[3][11] and Special White House Employee on Hillary Clinton's healthcare task force in 1993.
Eddy continued to teach and consult after he retired, joining the University of South Florida Institute for Advanced Discovery & Innovation in 2014, where he is a member and courtesy professor.
[13] Eddy published five books and many papers, including a series of 27 essays in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association.
[17] It was then generalized to analyze the progression, monitoring and repair of any probabilistic deteriorating system, and won the 1980 Frederick W. Lanchester Prize for the most important contribution to the field of operations research and management science.
In 1991, with support from Kaiser Permanente, Eddy began work on a large-scale simulation model of physiology, populations, and healthcare systems, called Archimedes.
[14] In 2008 the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation provided a $15.5 million grant to make the model readily accessible over the World Wide Web.
[25] In 1982, Eddy published a seminal paper in the New England Journal of Medicine that described the role clinical policies and guidelines play in medical decision-making, noted their importance in determining the quality of care, and advocated explicit analysis of evidence and estimation of outcomes.
The coverage criteria developed under Eddy's guidance were tested and vindicated during the national controversy over high dose chemotherapy and bone marrow transplant for late stage breast cancer.
Although the bulk of his work was in cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes, he also analyzed problems in such disparate fields as radiology,[51] osteoporosis,[52] ophthalmology, and youth suicides.
[54][55] In 2005, Eddy offered a unifying definition: "Evidence-based medicine is a set of principles and methods intended to ensure that to the greatest extent possible, medical decisions, guidelines, and other types of policies are based on and consistent with good evidence of effectiveness and benefit.