Grant: Planning and Dissemination Grant - Institute Community Support

CIHR aims to support novel research and knowledge exchange in order to improve the health of Canadians. Our application is relevant, particularly for patients with arthritis and related diseases. Arthritis and rheumatic diseases are associated with a great burden. Administrative health data (which record physician visits, hospitalizations and medications) can be used to study the burden of arthritis, including complications, and even unwanted effects from drugs. Administrative health data (held by each province and territory in Canada, and in other countries) can be used to study almost any disease. However, databases differ across provinces and countries, and there are problems with the lack of standards in the use of administrative data for rheumatic disease research. Since 2005, our team has worked hard to address many issues regarding the use of administrative data by producing guidelines, and tools to optimize the use of these guidelines. However, there is still work to do. Currently, we are working to create standard approaches that can be used with many different provincial or international health care databases. We are developing protocols to analyze the characteristics of patients with rheumatoid arthritis, and we are using these tools to study how patient characteristics (and other factors) affect patient outcomes. We thus hope to provide a way to standardize future studies. An important focus of our work is to encourage national and international collaborations in order to improve our understanding of how to optimize the health and well being of all those living with arthritis.