FDA’s New Guidance on Patient-Reported Outcomes
We’re big fans of patient-reported outcomes (PROs) here at PatientsLikeMe, defined by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) as: “A measurement based on a report that comes directly from the patient about the status of a patient’s health condition without amendment or interpretation of the patient’s response by a clinician or anyone else.” The self-report questionnaires we use on PatientsLikeMe to measure your health (such as the mood map, ALS-Functional Rating Scale/ALS-FRS, and other rating scales) are all examples of PROs, and they’re designed to accurately reflect the level of disease severity for a particular condition. Contrast PROs with the results of a blood test or an MRI scan; these are measured by someone other than the patient and are interpreted by healthcare providers. When a disease is relatively well understood and can be measured directly, as in HIV, measurement can be performed with objective measures such as blood levels (e.g., CD4 count and viral load). However, for many disease there is no objective measure for a disease (e.g., fibromyalgia). That means that trials and other clinical research studies are dependent entirely on the report of the patient themselves through PRO instruments. The FDA has recently released a new report: …