Clinical Trials / Clinical Research Expo at Medinfo

12 August 2004 - 10:08
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The Epimetrics Group will showcase the CV Outcomes web site and its collaborative tools for academic research networks at the Clinical Trials / Clinical Research Expo at medInfo 2004. This session is sponsored by the AMIA Clinical Trials Working Group and will include a wide range of developers and users:

• National Cancer Institute
• University of Louisville
• University of California, San Francisco
• MedDak
• City of Hope
• Thomas Jefferson University
• Intermountain Health Care
• Merck & Company
• Yale University
• National Library of Medicine
• The Epimetrics Group
• The University of Washington
• Johns Hopkins University
• Datamedica

The Expo is scheduled for Thursday 9 September from 7:30PM to 10:00PM in Yosemite A/B of the Hilton San Francisco.

Upgraded Server Now Functioning

01 August 2004 - 12:33
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After suffering a hard drive crash a week ago and hobbling along on a backup server in the interim, we’re now back in business with an upgraded server box. We think that all functions are running fine and that you should notice substantially improved performance. Please let us know if you encounter any problems, errors or other issues. Thanks!

Mid America Heart Institute Receives Multi-Million Dollar Research Grant

08 July 2004 - 12:10
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The National Institutes of Health has awarded Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City and Washington University in St. Louis over $15 million in a Specialized Center for Clinically Oriented Research (SCCOR) grant to fund a five-year, multi-center study of patients recovering from heart attacks.

The study, which begins the first of the year 2005 and ends in December 2009 will marry the basic science expertise of Washington University, led by Principal Investigator, Daniel Kelly MD, with the clinical outcomes strengths of Mid America Heart Institute and the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC). The 2 primary goals of the project are to eliminate the excess burden of myocardial disease in diabetic patients, and to define and characterize racial disparities in outcomes of patients with heart attacks.

John Spertus, MD, MPH, director of cardiovascular outcomes research at Mid America Heart Institute and professor of medicine at UMKC will lead the clinical portion of the grant and said, “Only through the rigorous description of racial differences in outcome, and the careful examination of multiple potential socio-economic, treatment, metabolic, and genetic mediators, can a rational strategy to eliminate racial disparities be designed and implemented.”

Patients presenting with a heart attack at participating hospitals throughout the United States will be enrolled in the study and will have detailed information about their health, care, and outcomes collected for one year after admission. Patients will also provide a sample of blood so that their lipid and genetic profiles may be analyzed to define what is most important in determining their subsequent outcomes.

Investigators at Washington University will concurrently conduct basic science studies in mice and pharmacogenetic analyses to discover why patients with diabetes and African American patients have worse outcomes after a heart attack.

Dr. Spertus said, “Heart attack is the most common cause of death in men and women in the United States. The long-term goal of this study is to develop a novel set of risk factors for this subset of heart attack patients and to lay the foundation for new treatments to improve outcomes.”

Mid America Heart Institute will receive $1.5 million for the first year of the study, with a total of $7.1 million during the five years of the study. The grant will pay for researchers at Mid America Heart Institute and Yale University, also a participant, for follow-up of patients, as well as other participating hospitals for their work in enrolling patients with heart attacks. An additional $500,000 grant, directed by Michael Cain MD from Washington University and co-directed by Dr. Spertus, will train new investigators to study these issues and blend the domains of basic science and clinical research into their future research.

A total of 4,500 patients from the following centers are expected to be enrolled in the study: Mid America Heart Institute and Truman Medical Center, Kansas City, Mo.; Washington University, Saint Louis, Mo.; Grady and Emory Universities, Atlanta, Ga.; Duke University, Durham, NC; Sentara Health System, Norfolk, VA; Yale University, New Haven, CT; Harvard-BI, Boston, MA; Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit, MI; Meritcare, Fargo, ND; Stanford University VA Hospital, Palo Alto, CA; University of Colorado, Denver Health, and Denver VA Hospital.

New KCCQ Section

28 April 2004 - 21:35
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We’ve begun an informative series of articles about the Kansas City Cardiomyopathy Questionnaire here. Check this section out for information about the reliability, responsiveness and interpretability of the KCCQ, among other topics.

As time goes on, we plan to add additional descriptions of material characteristics of this important instrument.

Licensing Instruments at CV Outcomes

15 March 2004 - 11:08
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Through our online registration system, you can license and download our HRQOL instruments – currently the Seattle Angina Questionnaire and the Kansas City Cardiomyopathy Questionnaire. You can also license and download tools that calculate the instruments’ scale scores from patient responses.

Access this system via the Instruments link you see in the Sections navigation panel on the left margin of every page on our site.

The process is explained in greater detail in this FAQ. But in a nutshell, to license any of our instruments and tools, you fill out forms telling us about your organization and project. Once we’ve reviewed your application and have determined which of our licensing entities is appropriate for your situation, our system prepares a license agreement and invoice. Once we’ve received the signed agreement and payment, you can download your items.

At every step of the process, our system will notify you by email about the steps as they’re accomplished. You can also track the status of your license from the Instruments section.

Since we initiated this system last May, 2003, our clients report that the process has made it easy and quick for them to access these important health status instruments. We hope you find it to be so, too! Please email us with any feedback about our site.

Department of Defense Study

09 September 2003 - 11:12
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CV Outcomes has collaborated with Yale University to design and conduct a randomized controlled trial examining the impact of implementing decision support tools at two military treatment facilities.

The decision support tools tested in the study were the Problem-Knowledge Couplers® from the Problem-Knowledge Coupler Corporation. A total of 1,902 patients were enrolled and randomized (936 to the Coupler group and 966 to Usual Care) from April through December, 2002. The primary aim of the study was to evaluate the impact of Couplers on quality of care measured through 24 health care quality process measures, grouped into screening/prevention and acute/chronic disease categories. Other outcomes included evaluation of the impact of the Couplers on resource consumption, and patient and provider satisfaction.

Final analysis of the study is ongoing and results should be in publication soon.

CORC and Wash U reach Reynolds Finals

31 August 2003 - 10:50
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An application to the Donald W.Reynolds Foundation to support a $24 million dollar Translational Research Grant from Washington University and the Mid America Heart Institute is selected as one of 4 finalist from an initial pool of 27 applicants from among the finest cardioavscular research insitutions in the country. Designed to advance the fight against cardiovascular disease and diabetes, the centerpiece of this innovative translational research effort is an ongoing post-MI registry by the Cardiovascular Outcomes Research Consortium (CORC).

PREMIER QI Registry Nears 1000 Subject Enrollment Milestone!

17 June 2003 - 06:55
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Enrollment in the PREMIER QI Registry is proceeding apace.

We are nearing the 1000 person mark, with a target of 2500. There are currently 16 sites across the country enrolling AMI patients with 2 additional sites beginning in July. Initial reviews of the data are sparking a great deal of interest. Stay tuned!

New Online Source for Instruments and Tools!

02 May 2003 - 09:35
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Through our new online registration system, you can now license and download our HRQOL instruments – currently the Seattle Angina Questionnaire and the Kansas City Cardiomyopathy Questionnaire. You can also license and download tools that calculate the instruments’ scale scores from patient responses.

You can access this system via the Instruments link you see in the Sections navigation panel on the left margin of every page on our site.

The process is explained in greater detail there, but in a nutshell, to license any of our instruments and tools, you fill out forms telling us about your organization and project. Once we’ve reviewed your application and have determined which of our licensing entities is appropriate for your situation, our system prepares a license agreement and invoice. Once we’ve received the signed agreement and payment, you can download your items.

At every step of the process, our system will notify you by email about the steps as they’re accomplished. You can also track the status of your license from the Instruments section.

We think this system will make it easy for interested parties to use these important measures of health status. Please email us with any feedback about our process.

American Heart Association Participates in PREMIER

13 February 2003 - 16:02
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CORC is very excited to announce a new participant in the PREMIER QI Registry; the American Heart Association (AHA).

As the AHA continues its push to advance the quality of care for patients with cardiovascular disease, it has accepted the opportunity to participate in the PREMIER QI Registry. Recognizing the unique opportunity of PREMIER to define the methodological challenges in collecting, analyzing and interpreting outcomes data to quantify the quality of care, and to leverage these insights into new paradigms of quality assessment, the AHA hopes to identify opportunities to accelerate the translation of new and exciting knowledge into clinical practice. Furthermore, the AHA plans to use this opportunity to understand the impact of current quality measures, as captured through their Get with the Guidelines Program on patients’ survival, symptoms, function and quality of life.

To facilitate the interaction between AHA and the Cardiovascular Outcomes Research Consortium (CORC),an AHA representative will actively participate in investigator meetings and serve as an ex-officio member of PREMIER’s Publications Committee.