Research summary
When it comes to optimal mental and physical health for patients, techniques for screening patients, managing disease and improving health care research all have an important role to play. Dr. Brett Thombs, Canada Research Chair in Patient-engaged disease management and prevention, is working on all three of these areas.
In one project, Thombs and his research team are uniting investigators from 10 countries and 48 scleroderma centres to create the first sustainable infrastructure to develop, test and share patient-oriented disease-management tools in rare diseases. In another, they are using a big-data approach linking almost 300 datasets from more than 275 investigators in 48 countries to develop individualized assessments of depression risk to make mental health screening feasible and effective. Finally, they are producing evidence on how to improve research methods and reporting—and, by extension, the impact of health care research.