Bartlett SJ, Witter J, Cella D, Ahmed S

Background

PRO data are beneficial to a range of stakeholders including patients, clinicians, researchers, national funding and regulatory agencies, health system administrators, and policymakers.

Objective

Because stakeholders represent diverse groups and needs, it is challenging to reach consensus on how to advance PRO development and harmonize data across settings to enable use for multiple secondary purposes. Collaborative national networks can facilitate the sharing of expertise, resources and necessary infrastructure; create development, use, and reporting standards; optimize formats to efficiently store and transfer data; and disseminate tools and information for widespread uptake.

Discussion

In the United States, the National Institutes of Health’s Patient Reported Outcomes Measurement System (PROMIS) offers an example of how collaborators can work across distances to form essential partnerships, create a common vision, and leverage technology to accelerate the development and testing of universal PROs that are broadly applicable across health conditions and settings.