From Populations to Patients: Progress, Challenges and Solutions for Better Understanding Health Outcomes

October 20^th, 2016 | 23^rd Annual Conference of the International Society for Quality of Life Research (ISOQOL), Copenhagen, Denmark

Dr. Ware presented an address entitled “From Populations to Patients: Progress, Challenges and Solutions for Better Understanding Health Outcomes” in the opening plenary of the 23rd Annual ISOQOL Conference. He provided his perspectives on advances made in the health-related quality of life (HRQOL) measurement field over the past few decades, the major challenges in the field today, and potential conceptual, methodological and technical solutions for these challenges. Dr. Ware also participated in a session in which he and other senior researchers gave advice to new researchers on successful strategies for dealing with challenges in their research and career paths. In addition, he took part in a roundtable discussion on the pros and cons of disease-specific and generic HRQOL measures.

JWRG’s Director of Research, Barbara Gandek, also gave a presentation entitled “Can the Accuracy of Generic Health Outcome Predictions Be Improved Using Individualized Disease-Specific QOL Impact Scales?” at the conference. This presentation compared the accuracy of alternative approaches to measuring total disease impact among heterogeneous populations with multiple chronic conditions. Advances in this area are particularly important for improving case-mix adjustment when generic HRQOL measures are used in observational studies.

More information about the ISOQOL conference can be found here.