- Clinical outcomes research is vital for enhancing patient care, advancing research, and optimising healthcare resources, leading to improved quality of life for people living with MS.
- MS Australia-supported researchers have developed a suite of free tools for researchers that will enable them to apply standardised definitions of clinical outcome measures in MS.
- This will allow researchers to use harmonised definitions of clinical outcome measures, which will guide clinical practice more effectively, and improve outcomes and quality of life for people living with MS.
The importance of researching clinical outcomes in MS
Clinical outcomes research is a broad field that focuses on the effectiveness of health interventions and health services. It is essential for improving patient care, advancing research, and optimising healthcare resources, ultimately leading to better outcomes and quality of life for people living with MS.
Tracking outcomes, such as disease progression, symptom severity, and treatment response, enables healthcare professionals to tailor care to meet each person’s needs effectively.
Additionally, researching clinical outcomes allows for the assessment of the effectiveness of treatments and interventions for MS. Through comparisons between different treatment approaches, researchers and healthcare professionals can determine the most effective strategies for managing MS.
Understanding outcomes in MS also aids in resource allocation. By identifying strategies that lead to improved outcomes and reduced healthcare use, policymakers can prioritise investments in MS healthcare and support services to improve the impact on the wellbeing of people living with MS.
While it’s evident that research into clinical outcomes of MS is important, it’s essential to acknowledge a caveat – the varying methods used by researchers to obtain outcome data. Overcoming this challenge is necessary for drawing meaningful conclusions from comparative research studies.
What did the researchers do?
Led by Dr Sifat Sharmin, an MS Australia Postdoctoral Fellow from the Clinical Outcomes Research (CORe) Unit at The University of Melbourne, researchers developed a suite of tools called MSoutcomes, that others can use, enabling them to adopt standard definitions for MS outcomes measures including confirmed disability worsening, confirmed disability improvement, progression independent from relapses (PIRA) and more.
MSoutcomes was developed gradually over the last 10 years, and was refined through a series of studies, which have explored the advantages and limitations of various outcomes that one may want to record, identify and analyse in MS.
What is the significance of this?
Prior to the development of MSoutcomes, researchers used their own tools for outcome measures, making comparisons across studies difficult.
MSoutcomes allows researchers to use harmonised definitions of outcome measures in MS, which will play a vital role in improving our understanding of MS and guiding clinical practice to enhance outcomes and quality of life for people living with MS.
Professor Tomas Kalincik, who is Head of the CORe Unit, said:
“A common language is essential to any human activity – including research.
By developing a unified and freely accessible tool, we are offering our colleagues who, like us, study the effectiveness of MS therapies, prognosis, epidemiology of MS or develop promising new therapies, a toolbox that will help them study clinical features of MS and its treatment in a way that is comparable among studies.
This is very important for sharing of research and for our ability to generalise and validate our findings as a community.”
MSoutcomes can be accessed for free here.
