Clinical Outcome Evaluation System

Software to Evaluate the SF-36® and SF-36v2^TM

COES version 4 with full compatibility with Win XP/Vista will be available soon – now accepting pre-orders. Orders placed before September 30 will receive a discount of 20% off all prices

All prices significantly reduced - please contact John Costi (john.costi@rgh.sa.gov.au) for further details

COES utilises the SF-36® and SF-36v2TM health surveys as a patient outcome tool and combines this with a patient demographic database and an extensive reporting facility. The SF-36® and SF-36v2TM are rapidly becoming the standard generic health measurement tool in Australia and have been extensively validated both in Australia and overseas. COES is a software tool developed by Repatriation General Hospital's Orthopaedic Unit in association with the Information Management Division, South Australian Health Commission (SAHC).  SF-36® Health Survey © 1988, 2002 by Medical Outcomes Trust and QualityMetric Incorporated - All rights reserved SF-36® is a registered trademark of the Medical Outcomes Trust SF-36v2TM Health Survey © 1996, 2002 by QualityMetric Incorporated - All rights reserved SF-36v2TM is a trademark of QualityMetric Incorporated

The SF-36® and SF-36v2^TM measure generic health concepts which are relevant across age, disease and treatment groups. It provides a comprehensive, psychometrically sound, and efficient way to measure health from the patient's point of view by scoring standardised responses to standardised questions. Eight scale scores are produced from this 36 item questionnaire. The scales are Physical Functioning, Role-Physical, Bodily Pain, General Health, Vitality, Social Functioning, Role-Emotional and Mental Health. Scores are calculated using algorithms provided by the Medical Outcomes Trust in the US. Physical and Mental component summary scores are also calculated. These scores are tedious to calculate by hand and may lead to errors during substitution and recoding. Statistical software packages such as SPSS and SAS are generally currently being used to calculate and analyse the scores.

Click to display an example screen

COES is the first user friendly software package available in Australia to provide the maintenance of patient demographic details, calculation and reporting of SF-36® and SF-36v2^TM results. COES provides these functions in an easy and simple to use manner and can be used on any IBM compatible machine. COES allows patients to be followed over any period of time and the comparison of their scores over these times. Individual or Group reports and graphs can be generated easily. Group reports can be compared to Australian norms.

There are many widespread uses for this software. An example could be in private practice where a patient would be asked to fill in the SF-36® or SF-36v2^TM form whilst in the waiting room. Once completed, the secretary would enter the data into COES and produce a report comparing the current scores with any previous scores provided by the patient. This would give the GP an overview of the patient's general health status at a glance prior to consultation. The software has also been designed to assist in research using the SF-36® and SF-36v2^TM, for example, comparing a pre and post operative joint replacement group of patients who are over the age of 55 with the Australian norms for the same age group. These reports are easy to prepare and can be exported to Excel for further analysis if necessary.

The advantages of COES are:

it is cost effective.
it is easily installable on many PCs and is a stand alone windows executable program.
the user requires no knowledge of programming.
it is user friendly.
it is a dedicated piece of software specifically designed for SF-36® and SF-36v2^TM scoring and the
    maintenance of these scores.
it allows the option of electronic data input from scanned forms thus eliminating the
    need for manual data entry.
the scoring algorithms have been validated using the 100 patient test dataset provided
    by the Medical Outcomes Trust.
This software has been presented and displayed at conferences held by The Australian Health Outcomes Collaboration which is the major annual conference for health outcomes in Australia.

A new look screen to display SF-36® and SF-36v2^TM scales with internal consistency checking of responses
New data input form for quick manual data entry.
Score Labels (e.g. pre-op, post-op, 1 month, 6 months etc)
Graphing Wizard

NEW MULTI-USER NETWORK VERSION
COES is now available as a multi-user network version to allow simultaneous use of the software. This is particularly useful for organisations looking to leverage their time and fast-trak data entry and reporting. Please contact John Costi (john.costi@rgh.sa.gov.au) for further information and pricing.

SF-36 VERSION 2 NOW AVAILABLE (SF-36v2^TM)
Version 2 of the SF-36 Health Survey is now available and includes the online survey along with the updated norm based scoring algorithms and reporting.

MULTI-COUNTRY SUPPORT
COES is fast becoming the international standard for use with the SF-36 Versions 1 and 2 (SF-36® and SF-36v2^TM). Reports include the most upto date Norms for the US, UK and AUSTRALIA. Support for other countries with Norms is also available.

To install COES the following system configuration is recommended:

486 DX 100 IBM compatible personal computer or higher
8 MB of RAM (preferably more)
Hard drive with at least 20MB free space
1 High Density 3.5" floppy disk drive or CD-ROM drive
VGA or better Windows-compatible monitor
Mouse or other pointing device
Windows 3.11, Windows 95, Windows 98 or Windows NT operating system

Also available as an OLE Server.
COES OLE Server lets you easily compute SF-36 scores in any application or database that supports OLE. This saves the user from having to convert their data into COES format.

COES can be purchased as a single-user license. Multi-user licenses are available on a sliding scale price basis. Proceeds from the sale go to Repatriation General Hospital and to QualityMetric Incorporated for licensed use of the SF-36® and SF-36v2^TM algorithms and Norms.

Please contact John Costi (john.costi@rgh.sa.gov.au) for further information and pricing.
 

A downloadable evaluation copy of COES.
Limited to 3 patients with printing, copying and exporting of reports disabled.

Other products:

LinkageWiz is a user friendly program that allows patient information from different datasets to be easily linked together. It uses common demographic characteristics such as patient names, dates of birth or identifiers such as Medicare Card numbers to link the data. LinkageWiz has been used extensively
in the South Australian Coordinated Care Trials, and for the identification duplicate records within Hospital Patient Master Indexes. For more information please go to the LinkageWiz web site.

Please feel free to email John Costi (john.costi@rgh.sa.gov.au) should you require further information.