David M. Eddy 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. 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'."
Education
Eddy attended Phillips Exeter Academy, then received a BA in history from Stanford University, MD from the University of Virginia in 1968, and PhD in Engineering-Economic Systems from Stanford in 1978.
Career
Eddy was Chief of the Bioengineering Branch of the US Army Medical Research and Development Command from 1971 to 1973. After obtaining his PhD, he was an assistant professor (1978) and then professor (1980) of Engineering Economic Systems at Stanford. In 1981, he went to Duke University where he was Professor of Health Policy and Management (1981–1986) and then J. Alexander McMahon Professor of Health Policy and Management (1986–1991). Eddy directed Duke's Center for Health Policy Research and Education from 1981 to 1986. In 1987, he resigned the directorship to focus on research and policy. Other positions include Chief Scientist for Blue Cross Blue Shield's Technology and Coverage Program and Medical Advisory Panel from 1984 to 2005, Director of the World Health Organization's Collaborating Center for Research in Cancer Policy from 1984 to 1996, Senior Advisor to Kaiser Permanente from 1991 to 2006, and Special White House Employee on Hillary Clinton's healthcare task force in 1993. Boards include Consumer Union (1982-1987), Board on Mathematic Sciences and their Applications/National Academy of Sciences, and the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) (1992–1998). In 2006, with Leonard Schlessinger, Eddy founded Archimedes Inc., a healthcare modeling company funded by Kaiser Permanente. Eddy was Chief Medical Officer of Archimedes until he retired in 2013. 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.
Research and policy work
Eddy published five books and many papers, including a series of 27 essays in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association. Eddy's work spanned several areas.
Mathematical models in clinical medicine
Eddy was the first to introduce Markov models to clinical medicine. His first model, published in 1976, was designed to analyze screening for cancer. It was used by the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association in 1978 to develop the first set of criteria for the insurance coverage of cancer screening tests. 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. The model was used by the American Cancer Society and other organizations to design national and international-level cancer screening policies. This was the first healthcare model to be independently validated against empirical data. In 1987, Eddy developed the CAN*TROL model used by the World Health Organization and National Cancer Institute to help set cancer control priorities both within the United States and Internationally. As a volunteer for WHO, he helped several countries develop cancer control priorities, in particular India, Sri Lanka, and Chile. In 1991, with support from Kaiser Permanente, Eddy began work on a large-scale simulation model of physiology, populations, and healthcare systems, called Archimedes. In 2006, Kaiser Permanente spun out the Archimedes model as a separate corporation. In 2008 the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation provided a $15.5 million grant to make the model readily accessible over the World Wide Web. In 2013 Archimedes, Inc was sold to Evidera.