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February 12th, 2016 | Cleveland Clinic Neurological Institute, Center for Outcomes Research & Evaluation, Cleveland, Ohio Dr. Ware presented a seminar on the latest patient-reported outcome (PRO) measurement developments and their implications for clinical research and practice and had open discussions with researchers and clinicians actively involved in patient-centered data initiatives at Cleveland Clinic on February 12, 2016. The seminar briefly summarized the history of PRO measurement and some of its most innovative and important recent conceptual and methodological advances. These advances include the standardization of metrics across population surveys, patient registries, clinical trials and clinical practice applications; methods that are adapted to the specific requirements of different applications while maintaining score comparability across applications; a new generation of disease-specific PROs that use comprehensive disease-specific QOL impact attributions to fill the gap between disease-specific symptoms that are not QOL and generic QOL measures that are not disease-specific; more aggressive approaches to making PRO measures more practical and more useful; and the first standardized and individualized disease-specific QOL impact measures that enable norm-based scoring throughout the chronically-ill population. Feedback from early adoptions of these advances was discussed.

November 2-6, 2013 | Dublin, Ireland A presentation entitled "The Validity of Quality Of Life Attributions to Specific Diseases: A Multitrait-Multimethod Comparison" was delivered by Dr. Rick Guyer of JWRG at the 16th Annual ISPOR European Congress in Dublin Ireland on November 4th, 2013. This study tested the convergent and discriminant validity of disease-specific quality of life (QOL) impact attributions using the Campbell and Fiske (1959) multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) approach. The study expands beyond previous empirical tests of the new Quality of Life Disease Impact Scale (QDIS®) by focusing on adults with three comorbid conditions. Results strongly support the convergent and discriminant validity of QDIS survey measures of disease-specific QOL impact attributed specifically to hip/knee, cardiovascular, and pulmonary conditions.

January 27th – 28th, 2014 | Group R&D, British American Tobacco (Investments) Ltd., Southampton, UK Dr. Ware presented an invited lecture covering noteworthy milestones in the history of patient-reported outcomes (PRO) including a new generation of standardized disease-specific PROs, the QOL Disease-specific Impact Scale (QDIS®), that fill the gap between widely-used disease-specific measures that do not measure quality of life (QOL) and generic QOL measures that do not measure disease-specific outcomes.  In his workshop, Dr. Ware showed how both the content and scoring of condition-specific QOL impact measures, including measures of the QOL impact attributed to smoking, can be standardized across conditions using QDIS and how norm-based scoring can make interpretation much easier. Dr. Ware also presented examples of how to test whether survey respondents who have multiple conditions such as arthritis and asthma are able to make valid ratings of the QOL impact of each condition using QDIS.  Another consideration of particular importance in smoking research that focuses on otherwise well smokers (free of chronic health problems) is the range of PRO measurement and whether the measurement “ceiling” is high enough to detect improvements with decreased tobacco exposure.  The ceiling effect observed for the SF-36® Physical Functioning scale (59%) was lowered using JWRG’s new QGEN® Physical Functioning alternative scale (35%), enabling detection of a more favorable functional outcome with reduced toxicant prototype exposure that would otherwise have been missed in a recent clinical trial.  Support for this lecture and workshop was provided by an unrestricted research grant to John […]

June 24th 2015:  Center on Behavior and Health (VCBH), University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont Dr. Ware lectured on conceptual and methodological milestones in patient-reported outcomes (PRO) measurement development.  He introduced a new generation of disease-specific PROs that fill the gap between widely-used disease-specific measures that are not health-related quality of life (QOL) and generic QOL measures that are not disease-specific.  Dr. Ware showed how both the content and scoring of disease-specific QOL impact measures has been standardized across diseases to enable norm-based scoring and interpretation of disease-specific PROs in the chronically-ill US population.  Results from a pilot demonstration test in an ongoing surgical registry illustrated how a powerful new adaptive survey logic can automatically adapt PROs to capture the impact of multiple chronic conditions to make comprehensive measurement more practical.

December 3rd, 2012 | Bethesda, MD Dr. Ware presented his annual lecture "Quality of Life Update – 2012" for the "Introduction to the Principles and Practice of Clinical Research" course offered by the National Institutes of Health on December 3rd. This was Dr. Ware's 14th IPPCR lecture. He focused on advances in integrating disease-specific and generic PROs while illustrating comprehensive generic and disease-specific patient reported outcomes (PRO) measurement. More information on attending the course directly, or remotely can be found here.