Donald Patrick and Gordon Guyatt are co-convenors with continuing support from the MAPI Research Trust. Caroline Terwee from VU University Amsterdam oversees systematic reviews of PROs for different Cochrane groups. Also from VU, HCW deVet participates in teaching of workshops for the PRO Methods MG and provides liason to Cochrane Review Groups.
The main objective of the Cochrane PRO MG is to advise Cochrane authors about when and how to incorporate and patient-reported outcomes, including reports on symptoms, functional status, general health, health-related quality of life, or any other health-related domain, into systematic reviews. Some Cochrane Review Groups (CRGs) have encountered difficulties when incorporating PRO data in reviews. Examples of such difficulties include pooling and interpreting data and evaluating the validity of PRO instruments. To this end, the Cochrane PRO MG has provided systematic reviews of PROs to the different Cochrane Review Groups to aid them in this task. The PRO MG will continue to update these reviews of PROs in different therapeutic areas as part of its contribution to the Collaboration.
The PRO MG also conducts original research on the use of PROs in Cochrane Reviews, including how to present them in the Summary of Findings Table and other issues related to analyses and presentation of results.

The PRO MG will convene its annual meeting during the Cochrane Colloquium 2010, 18-22 October - Keystone, Colorado www.regonline.com/Colloquium2010 . If you wish to find out more about our activities, please contact Iliana Petkova ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ) or meet us during the Cochrane Collaboration