Routine Use of Patient-Reported Outcome Measures (Proms) in Oncology Practice: Developing an Electronic Proms System and Evaluating the Effects of Its Routine Use

In Taiwan, patient reported outcomes have been widely used in clinical research or clinical trial as outcome variables. However routine use of patient reported outcomes in oncology practice is rare. The purposes of this 3-year study are (1) developing an electronic patient reported measures (e-PROMs) system that can be applied for daily oncology practice, and (2) testing the effect of routine use of e-PROMs on patients’ symptom and quality of life as well as on health service utilization. During the first year, three tasks will be accomplished: (1) conducting a real-time Delphi study to obtain consensus among experts of oncology clinicians regarding the contents to be included in the e-PROMs system (2) developing the e-PROM system that suits for routine use in clinical setting (3) preparing educational material for health clinicians (video and guideline). During the 2nd and 3rd year, the effects of routine use of e-PROMs will be tested through a sequential controlled trial where 90 patients in the control group will be enrolled and followed first. After completing the data collection for the control group, we will start enrolling patients for the experiment group. Patients in the experiment group will receive assessment using the e-PROMs system for four consecutive outpatient clinics. A real-time summary report of the PROMs will be provided to clinician for reference. Patients in the control group will also will receive the same assessment using the e-PROMs for 4 consecutive outpatient clinics, however no summary report will be available. The study subjects are patients diagnosed with breast cancer and scheduled for their first chemotherapy. The primary end-points for this trial are symptom severity and quality of life. Secondary end-points include patient satisfaction with physician communication, number of referral made, number of symptom management related prescription, documentation of problematic issues, number of unexpected clinical visits and ER visits. Data will be analyzed using generalized linear mixed model.

Project ID:PC10901-0297
External Project ID:MOST107-2314-B182-013-MY3