Pediatric and adult rheumatic and musculoskeletal (MSK) diseases challenge the clinical researcher: they affect the population across the lifespan, impact a broad range of patient-centered outcomes, are rarely cured, and often have multiple possible treatment strategies. If properly addressed, these factors present tremendous opportunities for improving patient care and outcomes of patients. The overarching goal of the Brigham and Women?s Hospital (BWH) CCCR is to facilitate advancements in the methodologic sciences supporting clinical research within the NIAMS pediatric and adult rheumatic and musculoskeletal (MSK) disease missions. VERITY is organized around central scientific themes that can be applied to multiple rheumatic and MSK diseases. The Cores address the following cross-cutting areas: 1) including patients in clinical trial design, outcome selection, result interpretation, and dissemination; 2) integrating behavioral economics to enhance benefits of known interventions, i.e., adherence to medications, engagement in physical activity and weight loss; 3) extracting maximum information content from big data; 4) using smart technologies (mobile health) to advance clinical research; and 5) disseminating knowledge and mentoring of local and national rheumatic and MSK disease clinical researchers through distributed learning models. These scientific themes will be approached through several Cores described in the following Specific Aims. 1. To strategically direct, supervise, and provide financial accountability to VERITY and to train a broad group of local and national investigators for patient-oriented clinical research in pediatric and adult rheumatic and MSK diseases. (Administrative Core) 2. To develop and implement state of the art methods in innovative trials and longitudinal comparative effectiveness studies for rheumatic and MSK disease research. (Methodology Core) 3. To support bioinformatic approaches to enhance utilization of large databases for phenotyping relevant patients, and implementing biomarker, electronic medical record, and comparative effectiveness analyses. (Bioinformatics Resource Core)
The BWH CCCR, or ?VERITY? (Value and Evidence in Rheumatology using bioInformaTics, and advanced analYtics) Cores will implement novel analytic methods and outcome measures that address existing and emerging needs in clinical research for preventing and treating rheumatic and musculoskeletal disorders. The pressing clinical research needs addressed by VERITY include: a) integration of patients? point of view (patient-centeredness); b) facilitation of innovative trials; c) incorporation of state of the art comparative effectiveness research methods to determine optimal treatments; d) development and testing of innovative behavioral interventions; and e) identification of relevant phenotypes and sub-phenotypes of common and uncommon rheumatic and MSK diseases using electronic medical records (EMRs), registries, cohorts and insurance claims.
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