Lee Wemyss, Director and Founder of Dash Global Ltd, September 2024
By now PROMs should be revolutionising healthcare. With so many people extoling their benefits (see our last post), you have to wonder why patients haven't heard of them, and to-date, healthcare still isn't using them. The same could be said for Industry too.
Why is this?
To see why, we asked our AI helper (Microsoft's Copilot): "Why do people think that PROMs have not had more influence than they should have, so far in healthcare?" Here is its answer, (verbatim):
Patient-Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) are tools used to gather patients’ perspectives on their health status and the impact of healthcare interventions. Despite their potential, several factors might explain why PROMs haven’t had as much influence in healthcare as expected:
Integration Challenges: Incorporating PROMs into routine clinical practice can be complex. Healthcare providers may face difficulties in integrating these measures into electronic health records and workflows.
Data Interpretation: The subjective nature of PROMs can make it challenging to interpret the data consistently. Different patients may have varying perceptions of their health, making it hard to draw standardized conclusions.
Resource Constraints: Collecting, analysing, and acting on PROMs data requires time and resources. Some healthcare settings may lack the necessary infrastructure or funding to support these activities.
Clinical Relevance: Some clinicians may question the clinical relevance of PROMs, especially if they feel that the measures do not directly impact clinical decision-making or patient outcomes.
Patient Engagement: Ensuring that patients consistently and accurately complete PROMs can be challenging. Factors such as literacy levels, language barriers, and patient motivation can affect the quality of the data collected.
Awareness and Training: There may be a lack of awareness or training among healthcare providers about the benefits and use of PROMs, leading to underutilization.
Despite these challenges, PROMs hold significant promise for enhancing patient-centered care and improving healthcare outcomes. Efforts to address these barriers could help increase their influence in the future.
SO, why isn't 'healthcare' doing more
Apart from 'Clinical Relevance' issue (which only some clinicians think as problematic and where most don't have experience of using yet), all the other problems (detailed above) could be described as structural. Although not simple - they all can be resolved by technology, good management and by making some investment.
As usual, the health service has all the knowledge and and good ideas to hand, it just struggles to incorporate those new ideas and implement change. It does what it has always done (and is designed to do), it looks after patients and collects data about its service delivery: to help its process of care work efficiently. It's already stretched doing that!
Collecting PROMs or patient outcomes data is looked on as 'non essential'. Its an overhead for which there is no budget.
What are Dash doing about it
Putting in place digital healthcare requires a very different but complimentary skill set. DaSH Global can do that working alongside healthcare - supported by industry - making impact by empowering patients and the patient voice through PROMs.
Our team has huge experience in healthcare, evidence collection and digital research. We have experts in PROMs, technicians, analysts, and nurses. We have spent years integrating new medicines, technology and approaches into healthcare. Our day job is not delivering care, its looking at how to implement and drive digital healthcare and RWE research.
In conclusion
We already have two national PROM platforms: one in Lung Cancer and the other in Pleural Mesothelioma. This year we are expanding these into Small Cell Lung Cancer, Peritoneal Mesothelioma and Blood Cancer.
And, despite all the challenges, we know that PROMs hold significant promise for enhancing patient-centred care, improving healthcare outcomes, and revolutionising Real World Evidence, Clinical Trials and the introduction of new medicines.
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