Outcomes Research

Within outcomes research we investigate the effect of healthcare interventions on relevant outcomes in economic, clinical or humanistic terms. Our services in the field of outcomes research are very diverse and range from designing and validating measurement tools to conducting observational studies in the field.

Quality-of-life studies

Health-related quality-of-life is an outcome that reflects all health-related aspects that are relevant to a patient. By measuring the effect of healthcare interventions on quality-of-life, different treatment effects can be integrated in one outcome. Many quality-of-life measurement tools have been developed, ranging from disease-specific to generic quality-of-life. A special type of qualtiy-of-life outcomes is the utility, which indicates how the quality-of-life status is valued relative to death and perfect health on a scale from 0 to one. At Pharmerit we can assist you in choosing the right instruments to include in your clinical trials, developing a new instrument, or in translating an existing instrument to a new language and validating it locally. Example.

Patient reported outcomes

Patient reported outcomes are collected from the patients themselves through e.g. questionnaires or interviews and may concern clinical experience, satisfaction, side-effects, burden, discomfort etc. Pharmerit can be of assistance in choosing instruments to include in your clinical trials, and in developing new instruments that meets your specific needs.

Medical chart review

Clinical outcomes of study participants may be collected from medical charts or from medical chart databases. We offer services to efficiently extract the necessary information from the medical charts. The information extracted is regularly used in burden-of-illness studies or as input in cost-effectiveness analyses.

Pharmacoeconomic trials

Given the increasing demand for health-economic data, it is often advisory to include health economics early in your clinical study designs. Health economic trals have a different purpose than (efficacy) clinical trials and may therefore require a different study design, for example in terms of the comparative treatment, collected outcomes and time-horizon. With our expertise in health economic research we can offer consulancy in early stages of clinical trial design to integrate health economics, or design the set-up for a separate pharmacoeconomic trial.

Burden-of-illness studies

In burden-of-illness studies we evaluate the total burden of a disease on a macro level. This burden is usually expressed with a combination of economic, clinical and humanistic outcomes, including incidence, morbidity, mortality, disability, quality-of-life and total healthcare costs. Example.

Cost studies and claims databases

In order to perform valid health economic studies we need to know the real costs associated with healthcare interventions. This includes the obvious costs for materials and physicians, but also costs for overhead, buildings and depreciation. We perform costing studies to obtain reliable estimates of costs for specific healthcare interventions in individual countries. We also perform costing studies on a macro level. In the latter case we estimate the total costs (a result of resource utilisation and cost-prices) associated with e.g. a specific disease. Our sources include scientific literature, public reports, expert interviews and analyses of claims databases. Example.