Clinician Perspectives on the User Experience, Configuration, and Scope of Use of a Patient Reported Outcomes (PRO) Dashboard

Abstract

To improve care coordination, forestall emergencies, and save costs, there is a growing movement to have patients at home habitually collect and provide data about their health status and related experiences to health care providers. One aspect of this movement involves the recurring use of reliable and valid questionnaires to collect and share patient reported outcomes (PRO) data. However, studies indicate that health care providers have a host of legitimate concerns about the systematic and routine collection, sharing, and use of PRO data. To explore these provider-specific concerns further, we developed a configurable prototype software application for use by providers and their patients called the PRO Data Dashboard (PDD). Using the PDD along with several written clinical case scenarios, we conducted focus groups with a diverse group of oncology care providers to generate findings relevant to the design, configuration, and use of PRO-based tools. We organized our findings into three categories: scope of use of PRO tools, configuration of PRO tools, and clinician user experience. We conclude that providers require fine-grained control over the configuration of PRO data collection and sharing features in e-Health applications.