TIME TO ACCELERATE: THE USE OF PATIENT-REPORTED OUTCOME MEASURES IN EUROPEAN ONCOLOGY

Today, the European Cancer Organisation has published a new Action Report, Time to Accelerate: the use of Patient-Reported Outcome Measures in European Oncology.

As part of its 2023 Community 365 roundtable series, ECO took time to work with stakeholders across the European cancer community:

• to better understand the value of incorporating patients’ perspectives into the decision making;
• to examine the role of patient reported outcome measures in cancer care and the value of their use;
• to evaluate the actual use of PRO/PROMs in daily practice;
• to discuss how to better integrate PROMs into the healthcare professionals’ daily practice;
• to generate policy recommendations based on the insights and perspectives of the those consulted and engaged, including via a specially convened roundtable event held in July 2023.

The results and conclusions of this exercise are today published via the new Action Report. Among its 12 key recommendations are:

• Advancing greater integration of PRO use into research, clinical care, quality of care improvement, health technology assessment and policy decision-making, at both EU and national levels.
• Adapting data infrastructures with electronic PRO systems to ensure PRO data can be better responded to in real time.
• Ensuring inclusiveness with reporting by all patient communities including harder to reach groups
• Supporting the uptake of PRO use in clinical settings through training of professionals in interpretating and using PRO data and educating patients in reporting PRO data and understanding the results.
• Ensuring better, and more standardised, aggregated publication and sharing of PRO data, including towards contributing patients and the health policy making audiences.

See all 12 key recommendations, and the full Action Report here.