COMPAR-EU: Discussing Preferred Patients’ Outcomes

COMPAR-EU is a project identifying, comparing, and ranking the most effective and cost-effective self-management interventions (SMIs) for adults in Europe. It focuses on SMIs within four high-priority chronic conditions: type 2 diabetes (T2DM), obesity, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and heart failure. It is a five-year project, started in January 2018. EPF’s role is to make sure patients’ perspectives are taken on board throughout the whole project.

On 10-11 July, the COMPAR-EU face-to-face workshop took place in Berlin. Over 40 participants (including patients, patient representatives and healthcare professionals) gathered during those two days to explore the perspectives of patients, researchers and clinicians, and to analyse the challenges that these different perspectives pose with regard to defining relevant outcomes for different chronic conditions.

What was the workshop about?

The workshop was the final phase of a Delphi Consensus Process (DCP) undertaken in May and June with the goal of finding out what outcomes are prioritised by patients living with type 2 diabetes (T2DM), obesity, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and heart failure. The aim of the event was to facilitate a deep discussion reflecting different perspectives, and achieve consensus on the final outcomes, referred to as Core Outcome Sets (COS). Once this is established, the COS will be included in the comparative analysis of self-management interventions tackling the four chronic conditions of the project.

What was discussed during the workshop?

Participants were split into four groups – each group representing one condition – with an equal number of patients/patient representatives and healthcare professionals. During the DCP, patients identified what matters most to them when it comes to self-management interventions for respective conditions, and that was the main topic of the groups’ discussions. On average, 80 outcomes were identified in advance (based on literature reviews) and then voted by patients online. On the second day, all the groups presented their selected COS to the audience.

The workshop was crucial to validate and fine-tune these patients’ preferred outcomes through fruitful debates, and to reach an agreement on at least 15 outcomes per core set per condition.

Later in the project, the COS will feed into the final product of COMPAR-EU – an interactive platform with self-management solutions. 

Would you like to know more about the project?

Check out the official project website, which has been recently launched: 
https://self-management.eu/

Contact person at EPF:

Lyudmil Ninov, EPF Project Officer