TOMs CONNECT first took place in 2016, and was a direct result of requests from various health services across the UK, interesting in Therapy Outcome Measures. They wished to learn more from rehabilitation services across the NHS that had already implemented the use of TOMs to evaluate and shape service delivery.

Six years on and we are thrilled to be running a TOMs CONNECT conference to celebrate over 40 years of  measuring therapy outcomes, which was started by Professor Pam Enderby, who worked with Dr Alex John, to create the TOMs.

This year, the conference programme is designed to highlight the impact of, and what has been achieved by, bringing outcome measurement into the world of healthcare, especially rehabilitation; plus how it is supporting many education services that provide for special educational needs. 

For those new to TOMs, it is an established and psychometrically robust outcome measure, helping health and social care professionals in different settings across the UK collect a core set of outcomes data. That data, which informs on peoples' 'Wellbeing', 'Participation', 'Impairment' and 'Activity' can then be interrogated to gain a detailed picture of how a service - from acute and community based rehabilitation to special education needs within schools - is performing. Detailed analysis of such outcomes data is hugely valuable to assist with decision making for the likes of patients management and offer very helpful insight to support 'service delivery'.

With over 250 rehabilitation teams that provide therapy services, thousands of therapists are working with the TOMs to collect outcomes data. With the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, through their ROOT system, continuing to capture key TOMs data to support SLT services across the UK, it is hoped this service will be developed in a way to support other therapy services to capture and analyes TOMs data.   

This year's exciting TOMs CONNECT programme will include the following topics and speakers:

What should Person-Centred Community Rehabilitation look like?
Prof Diane Playford, Professor of Neurological Rehabilitation at Warwick Medical School

The process of care and the nature and role of measuring outcomes
Tim Benson, Director at R-Outcomes Ltd Patient leader at Royal Berkshire Hospital and author of Patient-Reported Outcomes and Experience: Measuring What We Want From PROMs and PREMs

The impact of values and emotions on the success of rehabilitation
Neil Bindemann, Exec Director, Person-Centred Neurosciences Society

How to story-tell with outcomes data
Neil Pettinger, Information training consultancy that specializes in designing and delivering courses and workshops for both NHS analysts and managers

Breakout Sessions:

 - Developing a Patient Reported TOM

 - Working with TOMs Data

 - Implementing TOMs in the private sector

 - Implementing TOMs in the NHS

An update from the RCSLT and ROOT Data Collection
Kathryn Moyse, Outcomes & Informatics Manager, Royal College of Speech & Language Therapists
Katie Chadd, Research and Outcomes Officer, Royal College of Speech & Language Therapists

Addressing the challenges of measuring occupational therapy outcomes;

Speaker TBC