The Latest from the Patient Reported Outcomes Blog

Summary of the 22nd Annual ISOQOL Conference

Date: October 29, 2015
The 22nd annual conference for the International Society of Quality of Life Research (ISOQOL) was recently held in our backyard – right here in Vancouver. The theme of this year’s conference was “The Matrix: Quality of Life in Social Context”. Indeed, many of the presentations looked at quality-of-life using a variety of different lenses than […]

Guest Post: Selecting a PRO instrument for use at the point-of-care: the experience of the Alberta Ocular Brachytherapy Program

Date: August 28, 2015
Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) were originally developed for clinical trials, where they were incorporated into regular data collection along with biospecimen sampling, testing, or other measures. As a result, PRO instruments could afford to be lengthy – many questions could be asked to capture the fine nuances of symptom severity and functional status. PROs have since […]

Guest Post: Patients with chronic OAB – how much do they know about their condition?

Date: July 31, 2015
From a healthcare systems perspective, chronic conditions represent some of the most challenging healthcare needs to address. Studies in both the United States and Canada consistently demonstrate that these conditions are amongst those with the widest variations in their utilization of resources – driven not by clinical guidelines, but the availability of services in the […]

Guest Post: Using mHealth to collect patient reported outcomes from youths with physical disabilities

Date: July 10, 2015
Youths with physical disabilities often experience pain (Ehde et al., 2009). This pain can cause considerable disruption in their daily activities such as sleep, appetite, family functions, and peer relationships (Oddson et al., 2006). Clinically managing this pain requires regular surveillance, often based on patient self-reports. Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) are frequently used to self-report factors […]

Performance Anxiety and PROMs

Date: March 8, 2014
On February 25th, members from the VALHUE study team attended the 26th annual CHSPR health policy conference titled “Performance Anxiety”, in Vancouver, BC. This year’s conference was focused on performance measurement in the Canadian healthcare system, and included Canadian as well as international perspectives from UK and Australia. The conference featured discussions about the current state of affairs of performance measurement in Canada; what is being done, how, and the impact of performance measurement on healthcare system change. Included in that was the role patients play in engaging in research through the use of patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) and patient reported experience measures (PREMs). Read more

Collecting patient reported outcomes in the digital age

Date: February 12, 2014
Collection of patient reported outcomes typically occur in three ways: interviews, self-administration or a combination of both (Desphande et al., 2011). As the general population becomes ever more tech-savvy, researchers are moving towards electronic administration of PROs to collect patient outcomes data. The use of electronic PROs can be more beneficial than paper based PROs as they reduce data entry errors, allow for notifications to be sent to the patient and may be viewed as more convenient than other methods, thus increasing the likelihood of patient participation. Read more

Sharing our Canadian experience with PROMs at the 2013 National PROMs Summit in London, England

Date: December 3, 2013
The Second National PROMs Summit focusing on the Development of PROMs in Clinical Practice at a Local Level was held on November 14th, 2013 in London, England. The conference was attended by Angie Chan, Project Manager, on behalf of the VALHUE study team, whose presentation garnered interest among the mostly UK-based attendees. Read more

Reflections on the 2013 Canadian Association for Health Services and Policy Research conference

Date: July 11, 2013
The Canadian Association for Health Services and Policy Research held their annual conference in Vancouver from May 28 to 31, 2013. The conference was well attended by the Health Care Funding team, and we gave a presentation about our evaluation of the effects of introducing activity-based funding in BC and a poster about linking costs of care across different parts of the health system. Read more

Measuring the Patient’s View of the Queue: Challenges and Strategies for Collecting Patient Reported Outcomes Data for Waitlisted Surgical Patients

Date: May 16, 2013
Vancouver Coastal Health, in collaboration with the University of British Columbia, is collecting Patient Reported Outcomes (PROs) to quantify the effects of waiting for surgical care. General and condition-specific health status, pain, and depression are being measured at three points during the patient’s episode of care: 1) upon registration to a surgical wait list, 2) prior to surgery, and 3) post-recovery. These repeated measurements allow us to evaluate the impact of wait time on the patient’s health while they wait for surgery and after treatment. Read more

Learn more about PROMs

Date: April 24, 2013
The VALHUE study team will be showing off our research at the Canadian Association for Health Services and Policy Research's (CAHSPR) annual conference in Vancouver on May 28 - 31, 2013. Our poster presentation is about selecting a generic health status instrument for the systematic collection of patient-reported outcomes and our oral presentation will focus on lessons from the collection of patient-reported outcomes and knowledge translation exercises. Read more