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International Society of Quality of Life Research (ISOQOL) Conference 2022 And Beyond

5 December 2022
Timothy Pickles

Timothy Pickles

The 29th International Society of Quality of Life Research (ISOQOL) Conference was held in Prague on the 19th to 22nd October 2022.

My reasons were attending were two-fold. Firstly, this is an excellent forum to present research on patient reported outcomes measures and psychometrics, and second because I was chairing the meeting of the ISOQOL UK and Ireland Special Interest Group (SIG) as chair of the SIG. The conference was attended by roughly 500 researchers across the world with others able to access the digital poster hall remotely. I was the sole attendee from the Centre for Trials Research.

Due to this being the first in-person ISOQOL conference since 2019, it was first time to meet some researchers I had made links with since starting my fellowship/PhD in October 2019. Lee Aiyegbusi at the University of Birmingham had helped with my systematic review and was there with colleagues from the Centre for Patient Reported Outcomes Research. Conrad Harrison gave a talk to CTR earlier this year on psychometrics and clinical trials and was there with colleagues from the University of Oxford. I had started conversations through the SIG about next year’s National PROMs Annual Research Conference so it was excellent to Jill Carlton and her colleagues at the University of Sheffield to discuss this further. And I had only seen my supervisor Mike Horton of the University of Leeds once since we began, so it was excellent to spend more time with him.

The first day of the conference was specifically for training workshops, with a wide variety on offer. I chose to attend a full day workshop on estimands, which was expertly given by Corneel Coens of EORTC, Rachael Lawrence of Adelphi Values and Libby Floden of Clinical Outcomes Solutions, with a symposium on psychometric methods for intensive longitudinal data to finish.

At the lunchtime of the second day was the ISOQOL UK and Ireland SIG meeting, which I chaired with Antoinette Davey on the University of Exeter. We were grateful to have an discussion about the continued hosting of the National PROMs Annual Research Conference and what members want from the SIG, which was helped by having ISOQOL president Joanne Greenhalgh attending.

 

Moments later I was presenting on ‘Patient Reported Outcome Measures for Rheumatoid Arthritis Disease Activity: using Rasch measurement theory to achieve more meaningful measurement’ to a nearly full room. This went well (I felt) and I had a few questions afterwards about the analysis and computer adaptive tests.

The day was rounded off by a mentor/mentee reception, where I (as a mentee) got to chat for around an hour with Dr Kim Cocks of Adelphi Values, which was an excellent opportunity for me.

The Friday was an excellent day of more oral presentations, oral brief presentations and posters, along with SIG meetings, and was closed off my a conference social with Prague Boats going up and down the Vltava.

Saturday was an early start for the SIG Chairs Meeting at 7.20am but continued to be another excellent day. The awards session shone a light on some of the excellent research published throughout the year and it was wonderful to see so much of this coming from the UK and Ireland, which I was compelled to tweet about. As the conference came to a close, a few of us were able to take in a concert and meal that evening before flying back on Sunday.

https://twitter.com/PicklesTim/status/1584106216795492352

https://twitter.com/ava_mehdipour/status/1584281648753160192

 

A month later, I attended the Cardiff University Infection and Immunity annual Meeting on the 23rd November 2022 at the Cardiff City Stadium. This was a very different type of meeting to ISOQOL with a very audience of researchers. I presented a poster on the same topic as at ISOQOL, which was available at the intervals and lunch break.

Others from CTR were in attendance, including David Gillespie, Adam Williams and Emma Thomas-Jones, and Joanne Euden also had a poster to present. My primary supervisor Professor Ernest Choy was an invited speaker and it was kind of him to discuss some of my research as part of his presentation.

The majority of the speakers and attendees were researchers in laboratories across the Cardiff University, but I was aware that some colleagues based in the Division of Infection and Immunity (specifically dermatology) were working on patient reported outcome measures, so I was grateful to meet with them there and discuss the work we are all doing.

Both of these events were excellent opportunities to get to know researchers in the same field and to broadcast the work I am doing at the moment in Patient Reported Outcome Measures for Rheumatoid Arthritis Disease Activity. I am hugely looking forward to attending both of these again in the future, especially as ISOQOL is in Calgary next year.