Patient-centred healthcare outcome measures: towards a unified architecture

Measuring appropriate outcomes is at the core of patient-centred medicine. With an ever-increasing number of clinical trials being published, the heterogeneity of outcome measures used in different trials makes direct comparisons difficult. Despite this, clinical effectiveness research is increasingly influential in making decisions about which treatments are best for patients. A recent judgment has strengthened the importance of commissioners in the UK National Health Service (NHS) of recommendations made by the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), which are based on outcomes research.1 In the USA, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act created the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, to further assess options for prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease.