O - Outcomes

We are working closely with the COMET (Core Outcome Measures in Effectiveness Trials) Initiative to buid their Core Outcome Sets into our model as they become available.  In the interim, we have collaborated with COMET to develop the following high-level set of outcome categories to use in our initial annotation of Cochrane Reviews.  Eventually, specific components of individual Core Outcome Sets will be mapped to the appropriate category on our high-level list.

  • Physiological or clinical - NB this is a general category that we are planning to break down into more specific subcategories
  • Mortality
  • Infection
  • Pain
  • Mental health
  • Function
  • Quality of Life
  • Psychosocial
  • Compliance with treatment 
  • Adverse events
  • Satisfaction with care
  • Resource use
  • Withdrawals or dropouts from study - NB this is an outcome category which might be included in Cochrane protocols but is unlikely to be selected in core outcome sets for effectiveness trials
  • Device/intervention failure 

Our categories are very similar to the list of 23 outcome categories from Table 3 in an article by Davey et al that classified every meta-analysis with at least two studies in every review in the January 2008 issue of the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews   This classification is labelled as “Davey et al. Classification” in previous versions of the Ontology Diagram.