Evolving Medical Practices Research

How McCoy tracks, interprets, and teaches the changing landscape of healthcare.

Medicine is constantly changing. Procedures improve, drugs receive new approvals and indications, devices become more connected, and clinical standards evolve as new evidence emerges. McCoy’s research approach is designed to help organizations keep medical education current, accurate, and aligned with the realities of modern healthcare.

This work supports education, training, workforce development, and curriculum modernization. It is not intended to replace clinical judgment, patient-specific medical advice, or institution-approved care protocols.

Research Purpose

McCoy studies the evolution of medical practices across three primary categories: procedures, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices. Our goal is to translate complex medical change into structured learning content that helps students, professionals, and organizations understand not only what is current, but why practices change over time.

The future of medical education should function more like a learning health system: continuously integrating new evidence, real-world data, and expert knowledge into practical use. AHRQ defines a learning health system as one where internal data and experience are systematically integrated with external evidence and put into practice to improve quality, safety, and efficiency.

Research Objectives

McCoy’s research framework focuses on:

Medical Procedures

Tracking how procedures evolve through new techniques, improved equipment, robotic-assisted systems, minimally invasive approaches, imaging, outpatient delivery, and changes in clinical outcomes.

Prescription Drugs and Biologics

Monitoring new drug approvals, expanded indications, generic competition, biologics, biosimilars, safety updates, and changing treatment guidelines.

Medical Devices and Diagnostics

Studying connected devices, diagnostic tools, implantables, wearables, continuous monitoring systems, software-enabled devices, and post-market performance.

Education and Workforce Impact

Converting medical change into updated lessons, case studies, assessments, learning pathways, and credential-ready training.

Methodology

McCoy’s research process is built around structured evidence review, source integrity, and continuous updating.

Evidence Intake

We monitor trusted sources such as regulatory agencies, clinical guidelines, peer-reviewed literature, public health databases, professional societies, clinical trial registries, and approved product labeling. For example, the FDA’s real-world evidence framework defines real-world data as information from sources such as electronic health records, claims, registries, and digital health technologies, while real-world evidence is clinical evidence derived from analyzing that data.

Regulatory and Approval Tracking

Medical education must keep pace with product approvals and changing indications. In 2025, FDA CDER approved 46 novel drugs and 18 biosimilars for 10 reference products, illustrating how quickly treatment landscapes can shift.

Real-World Practice Monitoring

Clinical trials are essential, but they do not always capture how products and procedures perform across diverse real-world populations. McCoy tracks where real-world evidence, registries, device monitoring, and post-market surveillance can provide additional insight into safety, adoption, and outcomes. The FDA Sentinel Initiative is one example of a national electronic system used to monitor the safety of regulated medical products, including drugs, vaccines, biologics, and devices.

Device Lifecycle Review

Medical devices often evolve after initial approval through software updates, new generations, revised indications, and post-market learning. The FDA’s Total Product Life Cycle approach reviews and monitors devices using information across development, commercialization, safety, effectiveness, and quality.

Interoperability and Data Standards

Modern healthcare increasingly depends on structured data exchange. FHIR is a widely used API-focused standard for representing and exchanging health information, supporting a more connected healthcare ecosystem.

Key Research Areas

1. Evolution of Medical Procedures

Medical procedures are changing through minimally invasive techniques, robotic-assisted platforms, imaging guidance, catheter-based interventions, and outpatient surgical models. McCoy tracks not only the emergence of new techniques, but also the evidence behind their adoption.

Robotic surgery is a useful example. A JAMA Network Open study of 169,404 patients across 73 hospitals found that robotic surgery for general procedures increased from 1.8% in 2012 to 15.1% in 2018, while raising important questions about evidence, cost, and clinical benefit by procedure type.

For education, this means learners should understand both the technology and the evidence: what changed, what improved, what remains uncertain, and how clinical decision-making adapts.

2. Prescription Drugs, Biologics, and Biosimilars

Drug education must now account for faster innovation, expanded indications, biologics, biosimilars, pharmacogenomics, safety monitoring, and access considerations. Biosimilars are especially important because the FDA notes that approved biosimilar products can increase treatment options and potentially lower costs through competition.

McCoy’s research tracks:

• New drug approvals

• Expanded indications

• Safety label changes

• Generic and biosimilar availability

• Comparative effectiveness

• High-cost therapy trends

• Guideline changes

• Patient access considerations

The goal is to help learners understand medications as living categories, not static memorization lists.

3. Medical Devices, Diagnostics, and Continuous Monitoring

Medical devices are becoming more connected, data-rich, and personalized. Continuous glucose monitors, implantable sensors, remote monitoring tools, diagnostic platforms, and software-enabled devices are changing how patients and clinicians track health over time.

The American Diabetes Association’s 2026 Standards of Care includes updated guidance recommending continuous glucose monitoring at diabetes onset and anytime thereafter for people who could benefit from its use in diabetes management.

This shift matters educationally because learners must understand not only the device itself, but also the data it produces, the clinical workflows it supports, and the limitations of interpreting that data.

4. Software-Enabled and Intelligent Medical Devices

Software is increasingly part of medical products, diagnostics, imaging, monitoring, and decision support. The FDA maintains an AI-enabled medical device list to improve transparency for providers, patients, and innovators, while noting that the list is intended to identify authorized devices that use these technologies.

For McCoy, this area requires careful educational framing. Learners should understand what a device does, how it was authorized, what data it uses, what its limitations are, and where human review remains essential.

5. Precision Medicine and Personalized Care

Medical practice is moving toward more individualized treatment, especially in areas such as oncology, rare disease, immunology, and chronic disease management. The National Cancer Institute describes targeted therapy as a foundation of precision medicine because it targets proteins involved in cancer cell growth, division, and spread.

McCoy tracks how precision medicine changes what learners need to know: biomarkers, genetic testing, treatment matching, resistance, adverse events, access, and the relationship between diagnostics and therapy.

Research Translation Into McCoy Products

McCoy’s research is designed to become actionable inside the product ecosystem.

• Terminal organizes evolving medical knowledge into curriculum, assessments, learning pathways, and update-ready content structures.

• Surface delivers branded learning experiences that help organizations train learners on current standards, emerging practices, and practical application.

• The McCoy App makes medical learning more accessible, engaging, and global through structured lessons, practice, reinforcement, and community-driven discovery.

• Verify turns completed learning into trusted proof of achievement for students, employers, institutions, and organizations.

Together, these products help transform medical change into usable education.

Case Study Areas

Cardiac Care

Cardiac care continues to evolve through implantable devices, remote monitoring, catheter-based procedures, imaging, and electrophysiology advances. McCoy tracks how these changes affect patient education, professional training, device literacy, and long-term care workflows.

Oncology

Cancer education is increasingly shaped by targeted therapies, immunotherapies, genetic testing, companion diagnostics, and precision treatment pathways. McCoy’s research framework helps organize these complex changes into learning modules that explain both the science and the clinical reasoning behind modern oncology care.

Diabetes Management

Diabetes care demonstrates how devices, drugs, behavior, and data now work together. Continuous glucose monitoring, automated insulin delivery, updated medication strategies, and personalized care plans have made diabetes education a strong example of how medical learning must stay current with guidelines and technology.

Medical Device Safety

Device education must include performance, traceability, recalls, adverse events, and post-market learning. The FDA’s Unique Device Identification system is designed to identify devices through manufacturing, distribution, and patient use, supporting patient safety and post-market surveillance.

Future Directions

McCoy will continue expanding its research framework across specialties, populations, procedures, drugs, biologics, devices, diagnostics, and clinical guidelines.

Future work includes:

• Building living medical knowledge maps

• Tracking evidence and guideline changes over time

• Converting new research into updated curriculum

• Supporting expert review for high-stakes subjects

• Improving medical workforce training

• Expanding learning access across healthcare roles

• Using advanced analytics to identify where education must evolve fastest

Clinical research itself is also becoming more distributed. FDA guidance on decentralized clinical trials describes how trial activities can occur remotely through telehealth, in-home visits, or local healthcare providers, reflecting a broader shift toward more flexible evidence generation.

Conclusion

Medical practice is no longer a fixed body of information. It is a living system shaped by evidence, regulation, technology, access, patient outcomes, and continuous improvement.

McCoy’s role is to help organizations turn that movement into modern learning. By tracking how procedures, drugs, devices, diagnostics, and standards evolve, McCoy helps learners understand the current state of healthcare and prepare for what comes next.