Free, NIH-Funded Clinical Research Resources for Critical Care

March 14, 2017

Joanna Stollings, Pharm.D., BCPS, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, recently represented ACCP in a Delphi consensus process to create a core set of long-term outcomes measures for studies of intensive care unit (ICU) survivors. The process was part of a large National Institutes of Health–funded research infrastructure grant, awarded to principal investigator Dale M. Needham, M.D., Ph.D., FCPA, Johns Hopkins University, aimed at creating free resources valuable to clinical researchers conducting longitudinal studies. The developers suggest that most of these research resources can also be used in patient populations other than ICU survivors.

Free resources are available on the project's website (www.improveLTO.com) as follows:

• database of common patient-reported and performance-based outcomes measures and standardized information about them;
• adaptable tools, templates, and manuals to maximize the retention of research participants, including an interactive searchable database of more than 600 retention strategies; and
• statistical tool to address "competing risk of mortality" when evaluating functional outcomes.