What system do the PROMinsight CATs use?
Our CATs are run using the Concerto online, open-source adaptive platform developed by the University of Cambridge. Concerto is built on an R-based engine and provides a choice between several starting and stopping rules, next-item selection rules, and ability estimators, as well as allowing a range of IRT models including the Rasch model. Visit https://concertoplatform.com/about for more information about Concerto.
How do I know which questionnaire best suits my purpose?
There are several factors to consider when selecting a PROM, including the patient population characteristics, study objectives, and study protocol and setting.
Generic vs. disease-specific
The Impact of Vision Impairment (IVI) suite measures vision impairment generally, irrespective of the underlying eye condition, so is suitable for patient populations where vision impairment is the main outcome of interest.
Our other PROMs are disease-specific and should be used, for example, in patients with glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy or age-related macular degeneration.
Sample demographics
The choice of IVI instrument also depends on whether your population includes children (IVI_C), adults (IVI), or people living in residential care (IVI_RC).
Questionnaires vs. utility measures
Our questionnaires and CATs provide an overall or domain score for each participant, which can be used as endpoints for research studies, clinical trials, and real-world clinical settings.
Our utility measures are suitable for studies in which economic analysis is the main objective.
SStudy protocol and setting
Our PROMinsight CAT suite delivers fast, precise and comprehensive measurement of vision- and eye-related quality of life plus real-time feedback and reporting and is therefore advantageous for study protocols with a large test battery, healthcare settings with busy clinics and capacity for EHR integration, and research studies with access to hardware such as internet-enabled tablets/laptops.
What are item banks and CAT?
An item bank is a group of items (questions) that measures a subjective construct such as ‘activity limitation’. An item bank usually contains far more items than would normally be found in a paper-pencil questionnaire. The items are calibrated (ranked) on the same scale (like a ruler) using Item Response Theory methods.
A CAT system administers the items from the calibrated item bank. Using an algorithm and information from the person’s previous answers, the CAT iteratively selects the next item that most closely matches the person’s level of the construct estimated at that point in the test.
Is your CAT platform secure? Where are the data stored?
Data collected on our CAT platform are encrypted and stored on a password-protected virtual private cloud server on Amazon Web Services (AWS) with mandatory access control, firewalled from the public network with regular, automated security patches. Data are backed up daily.
Our CAT platform complies with the technical requirements of HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).
Can I host other digitalised PROMs or CATs on your platform?
Yes, our platform can host and deliver both CATs and non-adaptive, digitalised PROMs. Data collected via your CATs or digitalised PROMs are provided upon request via secure databases. We will set up your tests on our platform as part of our consultancy services.
What languages other than English are available for your PROMs?
We have several different languages available for each of our PROMs. Please contact us for specific information. If the language you need is not available, we can arrange translation and linguistic validation services.
How much do your PROMs cost?
The pricing of our PROM products varies according to whether they are ‘paper-pencil’, digital, or CATs. It also depends on the type, size and design of each project or program. Please contact us for more information and we would be happy to discuss your needs in more detail.
Do you offer paper-pencil versions of these questionnaires?
Some of our PROMs, such as our questionnaires and utilities, are available in paper-pencil versions; however, the digital versions are strongly recommended as they remove the need for physical storage of questionnaires, and manual data entry and scoring. PROMInsight CAT Suite is housed on an online cloud-based platform and is not available in paper-pencil format.
What type of consultation services do you offer?
We provide several consultation services, including:
• One-on-one consultation to guide you through each stage of the test development and implementation process, tailored specifically to your psychometric needs.
• Psychometric analyses to treat raw questionnaire data and optimise the psychometric properties of your scale.
• Biostatistical analyses to provide scientific advice, analytical plan development, data analysis and interpretation and reporting.
The PROMinsight CAT suite is housed on an online cloud-based platform and is not available in paper-pencil format.
What is Rasch analysis?
Rasch analysis is a form of Item Response Theory. Rasch analysis provides substantial insight into a scale’s psychometric properties, including how well the response categories are working, measurement precision, unidimensionality (whether the scale is measuring a single latent construct), item fit (whether the items are providing more noise than signal), targeting (how well the item difficulty targets the sample’s level of the latent construct), and differential item functioning (DIF, whether there is bias for certain items for certain subgroups in the sample, e.g. age or gender).
Rasch analysis converts the ordinal-level raw score data from the item responses into estimates of interval person measures (expressed in logits [log of the odds units], which are suitable for subsequent parametric testing.
How do CATs work in practice?
Users are provided with a web login to their own personalised test portal where they can access all their specific tests online. Tests can be administered on any internet-enabled tablet, smartphone, laptop or computer.
At the completion of each test, a score is automatically computed and presented on screen and a final report synthesising the results can also be generated. Data are provided to users in a spreadsheet in .csv format at pre-arranged intervals.
How can we implement CATs in healthcare?
Tightly integrated with electronic health records systems, our cloud-based CAT platform enables patients to answer the tests via an online portal. Their scores are automatically and securely pushed via API (Application Programming Interface) to their electronic health records, ready for review and discussion with their treating doctor during the consultation.
Our system also has the capability for sending the tests to patients prior to their appointment via a secure web link, so that patients can take the test on their own smart device rather than in the clinic.