A step in the right direction: Harmonizing measures for use in asthma patient registries

[...]global consensus is needed not only on standardized measures of asthma outcomes to be used in asthma registries but also on other information needed to investigate factors associated with future risk of exacerbations and adverse events. Furthermore, investigating variations in asthma prognosis associated with potential risk factors and plausible effect modifiers, such as age, ethnicity, social class, and comorbidities, will facilitate the identification of high-risk groups that require closer clinical management. [...]internationally standardized guidelines for asthma diagnosis have been implemented widely in clinical settings, and standardized asthma outcome measures for use in clinical trials have been developed.3-5 To advance the approaches to standardizing asthma registries, it is essential to harmonize existing registry measures so that historical data can be used, as well as to determine measures to be collected prospectively so that all relevant data are collected the same way (Fig 1).