Patient Reported Outcomes (PROs) and Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs): What are they and what do they provide?

by Ángel Barrera, November 11, 2020

As we have recently mentioned in articles like “Technology and the patient are keys to the future of clinical studies,” there is a growing tendency to complement the clinical information collected about diseases and treatments with the information provided directly by the patient during the course of his or her disease. This is what is known as Patient Reported Outcomes (PROs). But do we know what value these data provide to professionals and the patient?

Normally, when a patient is diagnosed with a disease, the first thing the patient wants to know is “Is there a cure?” and then, “How will I live, what will my quality of life be?” as noted in the HealthCatalyst article.

In that context, healthcare professionals are becoming more interested in understanding the patient’s daily condition, so they are beginning to collect information directly from the patient, through PROs. PROs, according to the FDA, are “a measurement of any aspect of a patient’s health status (symptoms, quality of life, etc.) that comes directly from the patient (i.e. without the interpretation of the patient’s responses by a physician or anyone else).” These PROs are important in understanding whether the treatments and procedures produce a difference in the health and qualify of life of the patient, providing information about more than just effectiveness.

One of the main benefits of PROs is the improvement in clinical decision making, helping a medical professional to choose among similar treatments of the same effectiveness, enabling them to opt for those that help to improve the patient’s qualify of life as much as possible. On the other hand, PROs also help empower the patient, allowing him or her to actively participate with regard to the disease, enabling the patient to understand and improve adherence to treatment.

With the goal of implementing the collection of PROs in clinical studies, hospital centers and other providers developed PROMs (Patient Reported Outcome Measures) defined, according to the University of British Columbia, as standardized and validated questionnaires completed by patients that measure their perception of their health status. For an effective implementation of PROMs, providers are beginning to select technologies that enable the collection of data to be carried out in a simple way, facilitating the patient’s efforts, and that make use of data analysis tools to evaluate the results that are obtained.

As a result, responding to this need, our platform Caaring® offers the possibility of implementing PROMs in clinical studies, remote patient monitoring solutions, etc. in a convenient and simple way, collecting data directly from the patient, and sharing them with the physician at the same time. Through different questionnaires, the patients collect data about their daily experiences, providing a more real and accurate view of their condition, allowing the professional to make decisions based on the results that are obtained.

Today we are sure that the use of these kinds of tools will continue providing value, improving the way we deal with diseases and making it practical to have precise medical care adapted to every patient.

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