Quantitative assessment of rheumatoid arthritis in standard clinical care: turning clinical care into clinical science

Patient questionnaires are a valuable method of monitoring the health status of patients with musculoskeletal conditions as part of daily clinical practice. Quantitative clinical monitoring improves the physician's ability to detect and document changes in patients' health conditions and thus leads to greater precision in clinical decisions. Furthermore, routine data collection on consecutive patients facilitates the analysis of groups of patients, providing more information than can be obtained from randomized clinical trials.