RCAT – Renal Computerised Adaptive Test
Development of a novel item bank and multidimensional computerised adaptive test to measure patient-reported outcomes and improve management of kidney diseases.
Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) affects 1 in 7 people in the UK. Those with advanced CKD may need demanding and costly treatments, such as dialysis, for the rest of their lives. These patients often experience a very poor quality of life and can also get worse very quickly. Unfortunately, this can happen between visits to their clinical team, meaning they need to go to hospital as an emergency and have more ill-health as a result.
The aim of our research is to support online symptom monitoring of patients with CKD to better support care.
Key researchers
Description of the project
Patients and clinicians believe it would be helpful to ask patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) to use a computer/smartphone to provide regular information about their quality of life and symptoms in between their usual hospital appointments. This information can be collected using questionnaires known as ‘electronic patient-reported outcome measures’ or ePROMs. The use of ePROMs could help clinicians respond better to patients’ needs.
The RCAT project aims to develop a new ePROM questionnaire that asks targeted questions to patients based on their individual circumstances.
The project is funded by Kidney Research UK.
The study is split into three phases, over three years (2019-2022):
- Phase 1: we will talk to patients with CKD and their healthcare team, as well as search through previous research, to find out how CKD affects patients.
- Phase 2: we will develop a questionnaire item bank which will allow us to collect information about patients’ quality of life and symptoms.
- Phase 3: we will use the questionnaire to develop a Computerised Adaptive Test (CAT). The CAT looks through the full questionnaire and chooses the questions that will be targeted to the patient completing the ePROM.
University of Birmingham
University Hospitals Birmingham
External collaborators
Telephone:
+44(0)121 414 7635