Developing Design Principles to Integrate Patient-Reported Outcomes (PROs) Into Clinical Practice Through Health Information Technology: Data, User Experience, and Workflow Requirements for PRO Dashboards

Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) are patient-generated health data that provide standardized assessments of how patients experience health and healthcare. Advancements in health information technology have enabled the use of electronic PROs (ePROs) to advance patient-centered care. Although ePROs are valuable in clinical practice, integrating them into existing technology systems and workflows is difficult. Successfully leveraging ePRO data requires scaling and balancing the needs of individual users with the health system at large. Guidelines are needed to facilitate meaningful and effective ePRO use in dynamic, real-world clinical settings.

To address this issue, the research team convened a community of practice composed of local and national stakeholders to inform the iterative development of guidelines for ePRO use.

The specific aims of the research were as follows:

• Mobilize an ePRO community of practice to facilitate knowledge sharing.
• Establish guidelines for ePRO use in the context of real-world practice.

The research team and community of practice analyzed peer-reviewed literature on ePRO use, conducted semi-structured interviews with clinical providers, cataloged local ePRO use cases, and monitored ePRO implementation within the University of Washington’s electronic health record system over a 4-year period. Findings were aggregated and organized into thematic areas that informed guideline development.

The research team identified a total of 24 guidelines across three thematic areas: governance, integration, and reporting. The guidelines highlight strategies to balance health system goals and resources, practically and meaningfully implementing ePROs in clinical care, and translating ePROs data into actions that support healthcare transformation. Health systems may leverage these guidelines regardless of the specific technology platform or PRO measurement approach, which enables them to be adapted for local contexts. The current research points to a need for continuous, structured approaches to organizational learning in order to translate guidelines into patient-centered practice.