With the proliferation of smartphones and personal tracking devices (such as Fitbits), technology has the means for cancer patients to provide feedback to their healthcare providers about their symptoms and side effects of treatment.  Such feedback is called “patient reported outcomes,” or PROs.  However, PROs are difficult to measure in a consistent manner, and thus far have not been incorporated into many cancer center clinics or clinical trials.

But times are changing.  One of the big news items to come out of the huge American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting this month was a study of a web-based system that enabled cancer patients to self-report their symptoms. In this study, patients who used the tool reported weekly on 12 common symptoms experienced during chemotherapy (among them appetite loss, difficulty breathing, fatigue, hot flashes, nausea, and pain), and graded them on a five-point scale.  This web-based tool actually helped patients live longer. The increased survival benefit (five months) was better than the survival benefits offered by many new cancer drugs submitted to the FDA for approval.

Patient reported outcomes as quality measures are of interest to major cancer organizations. The US Food and Drug Administration had issued guidance for industry regarding patient-reported outcome measures, and the National Cancer Institute has developed a standardized measurement system for patient reported outcomes.  ASCO has a PRO committee that is developing and testing PRO measures.

On June 15 at 8 pm Eastern Daylight Time (5 pm Pacific), #LCSM Chat will discuss patient reported outcomes and how they might help improve treatment outcomes as well as clinical trials.  Moderator Janet Freeman-Daily @JFreemanDaily will lead our chat using the following topic questions:

• T1: What patient-reported outcome measures would be most valuable to patients during treatment?
• T2: What technologies would be most effective for communicating and capturing patient reported outcomes in cancer?
• T3: What patient-reported outcomes would be meaningful to patients when evaluating treatment options and related quality of life?
• T4: How can we make patient-reported outcomes measurable–how to measure level of nausea? Neuropathy? Breathing difficulty?
• T5: What patient-reported outcomes be valuable in studies of cancer care and survivorship?

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References:

• Web-Based System for Self-Reporting Symptoms Helps Patients Live Longer (ASCO 2017 abstract)
• Guidance for Industry Patient-Reported Outcome Measures: Use in Medical Product Development to Support Labeling Claims (US Food and Drug Administration)
• Patient-Reported Outcomes version of the Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (PRO-CTCAE™) (National Cancer Institute)
• The Rise of Patient-Reported Outcomes in Oncology (ASCO)
• Implementing Patient-Reported Outcome Measures (Partners HealthCare)