Maxime dougados biography of george
· Personal information · Activities....
ASAS (ASsessment of Ankylosing Spondylitis) working group was founded in 1995 in Maastricht. The idea for ASAS came from Sjef van der Linden, professor of Rheumatology at University Hospital Maastricht, with a special interest in the field of ankylosing spondylitis.
The congress was honoured by the presence of the President of EULAR, Johannes Bijlsma, EULAR's past president Maxime Dougados, and other invited honourable.
Désirée van der Heijde joined as a member of staff in Maastricht in 1994 starting a research line on outcome assessment in AS. From the beginning it was the idea to also develop a core outcome set (COS) for AS similar to what had been done for RA by Outcome MEasures in Rheumatoid Arthritis Clinical Trials (OMERACT), funded by Maarten Boers, also working at the same department.
Therefore, ASAS was built after OMERACT with the aim to develop a COS for AS. The core set of domains and the subsequent selection of instruments was developed by ASAS and later endorsed by OMERACT. Members of the first steering committee were in addition to Sjef van der Linden and Désirée van der Heijde, Maxime Dougados (Paris, France), Asim Khan