Grant: Planning Grants

Across chronic diseases, most measures used to assess disease activity, symptoms, impact and treatment rely largely on clinician evaluations combined with objective data such as laboratory values. However, clinical indicators provide only a portion of the information needed to fully understand and compare treatments. There is growing consensus that the patient perspective is also essential when evaluating disease burden and the effects of treatments. Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) provide a standardized method of capturing patient perspectives about their health and experiences. A meeting will be held to bring together clinicians, researchers, patient advocates, governmental and industry representatives to evaluate stakeholder interest, needs and challenges of developing a network and PRO platform in Canada. Stakeholders from the U.S. Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS)initiative, supported by the NIH, will play a key role during the meeting. We will explore how Canadian researchers and clinicians can benefit from the NIH 180 million dollar investment through a potential Canadian PROMIS extension.