The term ‘clinimetrics’ refers to a methodological discipline which regards the development and validation of quantitative measures of clinical assessment. It is thus focused on the measuring instruments and on the quality of their performance. The interest in evaluating patients in specific ways has increased over the past two decades, leading to redundancy in the tools and hence the need for an intellectual frame of reference for clinical judgment. In this issue of EB Talk, we discuss this topic with Dr. Chad Cook, physiotherapist and professor at Duke University, North Carolina, USA, who was among the first rehabilitation professionals to understand the potential of clinimetrics.