Defining Clinically Meaningful and Sustainable Outcomes in Multimorbidity Research and Care
Supervisors:
Dr Beatriz Goulao, School of Health & Wellbeing, University of Glasgow
Prof David McAllister, School of Health & Wellbeing, University of Glasgow
Dr Jan Boehnke, School of Health Sciences, University of Dundee
Dr Peter Hanlon, School of Health & Wellbeing, University of Glasgow
Summary:
This PhD project will address a major challenge in modern healthcare: improving how treatment benefits are defined and measured for people living with multiple long-term conditions. Current clinical research and healthcare decision-making largely rely on disease-specific models and outcomes developed for single conditions, which often fail to reflect what matters most to people managing several conditions at once. Patients with multimorbidity frequently experience high treatment burden, polypharmacy, fragmented care, and reduced quality of life, yet these factors are rarely integrated into how treatment success is evaluated.
The project will develop a patient-centred and sustainability-focused framework for defining clinically meaningful benefit in multimorbidity research. Using scoping reviews, quantitative trade-off methods, patient and public involvement, and analysis of existing datasets, the research will explore how patients prioritise symptom improvement, functioning, treatment burden, healthcare use, and sustainability considerations. The student will also investigate whether current minimal important differences (MIDs) are appropriate for multimorbidity populations and how factors such as frailty, deprivation, and polypharmacy influence perceptions of meaningful benefit.
Based within the School of Health and Wellbeing team at the University of Glasgow, the project offers access to leading expertise, methodological innovation, and rich datasets to support impactful, patient-focused research.