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 3-7, 2012 | Berlin, Germany This presentation entitled “Standardizing the Metric and Increasing the Efficiency of Physical Functioning Outcomes Measurement” demonstrated that improved adaptive survey logic (ASLX®) combined with improved physical functioning survey items can achieve the following improvements: a standardized scale that maintains backward comparability with legacy generic physical functioning measures; reductions in respondent burden of 50% in comparison with routine CAT surveys; reduced percentage scoring at the highest score level (ceiling); and improved range over which reliable measurement can be achieved, including for those with mild impairment. The presentation was made by Dr. Rick Guyer of JWRG on Tuesday, November 6th at the ISPOR 15th Annual European Congress.

October 10th, 2013 | Worcester, MA Dr. Ware lectured on "The Impact of Health Care: Quantifying the Voice of the Patient," one of four presentations during the Albert Sherman Center Inaugural Scientific Symposium at the UMass Medical School on October 10th, 2013. Other speakers included Joseph Goldstein and Michael Brown (University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center) who summarized their Nobel Prize winning discoveries in 2-part lectures entitled: "A Century of Cholesterol and Coronaries." Robert Langer (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) lectured on "Controlled Drug Delivery and Tissue Engineering for Angiogenesis Inhibitors." Dr. Ware demonstrated advances in psychometric methods and Internet-based surveys that are fundamental to understanding patient functioning and well-being outcomes in clinical research and practice.