Measures of clinical effectiveness typically reflect outcomes that are important to patients, such as:

  • Symptoms and events related to the disease (morbidity)
  • Patient survival (mortality)

Sometimes, outcomes – such as a heart attack, or a malignant growth (cancer) or death – can be identified and measured using a clinical definition by someone other than the patient. However, there is increasing awareness that treatments should not just be clinically effective and economically appropriate, but should also be acceptable and indeed desirable to patients.

Clinical effectiveness measures cannot tell us how a patient feels, or what they want to achieve with a treatment. Measuring this element of acceptability requires patient-based evidence that includes measures of well-being.