ePRO Features
It could be very useful for gathering information. If somebody has a health problem, they can just enter the information in the system. That [information] gets shown to the doctor, the nurses, and whoever else that’s connected to the system.
-Participant
The electronic Patient Reported Outcome (ePRO) tool has been designed to assist individuals with complex care needs and their primary care providers develop and monitor SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Based) goals and health outcomes. The technology has been developed in collaboration with individuals with complex care needs, their caregivers, and primary care providers. The ePRO tool is available on two platforms: a mobile app available on smartphones and an online desktop portal.
Goal-Setting
The ePRO tool provides an opportunity for both individuals with complex care needs and their primary care provider to collaboratively discuss and set goals for monitoring. Adopting goal-oriented care approaches can support persons experiencing complex care challenges, and better support coordination and care continuity.
Goal Setting helps to prioritize competing care needs and allows the one experiencing complex care needs to set health goals that are important to them, which can help in self-management and improve quality of life.
Web-based Portal
The web-based portal allows individuals and their providers to create personalized goals. Goal-setting typically occurs during an in-person visit at the clinic. Part of goal-setting involves setting up monitoring questions about the goal. For example if the goal is "go for a morning walk" a question may be "how many minutes was your walk today?"
Individuals and their providers can work together to identify what feedback looks like in terms of types of questions asked and how often an individual will need to answer. The ePRO tool also helps track symptoms such as pain, anxiety or mobility which can be done by adding outcome measures to an individual's feedback schedule.
The system automatically organizes the questions, so only those questions required to be answered on a particular day will appear. Individuals tracking goals and outcomes can choose to provide feedback on the portal or the ePRO mobile app.
ePRO Mobile Dashboard
The ePRO mobile app offers individuals a way to report and track the goals and other outcome measures they have set with their primary care provider.
Goals and Outcome Measures can be viewed right on the dashboard (home screen), with reminders to tell individuals they need to provide feedback about their goals and outcomes (the orange circle with a number). The numbers indicate how many questions need to be answered. Individuals can provide feedback from previous days if they have forgotten. A check mark means monitoring is up to date.
How often an individual reports on goals and outcomes is determined in collaboration with the primary care provider.
With consistent comprehensive monitoring persons with complex care needs, their caregivers and primary care provider will have access to information to help prioritize and make decisions about care.
Goal Monitoring
Complete goal and outcome monitoring can be viewed on both the Mobile App and Web-Based Portal. The graphic illustration provides an easy to follow timeline that allows both individuals and their primary care providers the ability to track responses to questions and outcome measures overtime. To view additional information or context to responses, hover over the point of interest (orange circles pictured on the graph), and any free text comments that were added to that monitoring will appear.
For quick reference, view the seven most recent responses (coloured squares) and the Goal Attainment Scale (spark line) on the dashboard of the Web-Based Portal.
Patient-Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs)
Individuals with multiple chronic conditions have highly variable, complex, and often subjective needs. As a result, the patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) on ePRO had been designed to help these individuals identify problems, trace changes over time, compare or integrate information acquired by multiple providers, and set performance standards. There are several domains of PROMs including a wide variety of illness symptoms, treatment side effects, functionality, and quality of life.
PROMs have various applications including systematic screening of issues that are otherwise prone to go undetected or unassessed by providers, facilitating reflection on treatment progress and next steps, structuring documentation of patient problems among diverse providers, assessing and comparing outcomes achieved by different providers, and assessing the effectiveness of system-wide or routine practices and treatments.