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Kenneth A. Kobak, PhD Vice President of Research |
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Dr. Kobak applies this state of the art rater training methodology in his current role at MedAvante to develop and maintain a cadre of highly qualified and highly reliable raters to perform remote, centralized, and unbiased assessments in clinical trials. He is also the Director of the MedAvante Research Institute, which conducts research into methodological issues associated with clinical trials, with an emphasis on examining issues related to the impact of clinician assessment on signal detection and ways to improve this through the use of new technologies.
Prior to MedAvante, Dr. Kobak founded Research Training Associates, where he was a consultant to industry, and developed new methodologies for training and calibrating raters in clinical trials using new technologies, such as videoconferencing (to remotely teach and observe trainees applied skills), CD-Rom and Internet tutorials (for didactic training and testing), and digital audiotape (for monitoring raters performance during clinical trials). Dr. Ken Kobak is a Research Scientist with several decades experience in clinical assessment, rater training, rating scale development, and clinical trials methodology. While at the University of Wisconsin Medical School and Healthcare Technology Systems, Dr. Kobak managed a clinical trials unit, and pioneered the use of computer-administered rating scales in clinical trials. He authored computer-administered (IVR) versions of several clinician-administered rating scales, such as the Hamilton Depression (HAMD) and Hamilton Anxiety Scales (HAMA), which are widely used by industry today, and a computer-administered version of the PRIME-MD, a diagnostic interview which was published in JAMA. Dr. Kobak received several NIMH Grants to develop and study rater training methodology for depression, schizophrenia, and autism. He authored a paper, “Enriched rater training using Internet based technologies: A comparison to traditional rater training in a multi-site depression trial” in which the positive results were presented at NCDEU and published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research. Dr. Kobak received a New Investigator Award from NIMH in 1996, and is a core member of the Depression Rating Scale Standardization Team (DRSST), a collaboration of pharma, academia, and government to develop standardized scoring conventions for the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAMD). He is co-author of the Rater Applied Performance Scale (RAPS), which is widely used by industry to evaluate raters applied clinical skills in administering symptom rating scales, and is co-author with Dr. Janet Williams of the SIGMA, a structured interview guide for the Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale. Dr. Kobak received his BA, MSSW and PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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