Guidelines

Include drill down or up capacity

Users may desire varying levels of detail regarding PRO data. For example, one provider may want to assess sub-scores or individual item-level responses to PRO measures by drilling down from an overall score within an ePRO report. Another provider may wish to examine PRO scores among a group of patients by drilling up to population-level scores across the same PRO measure. To support flexible means for users to analyze PRO data across and within PRO instruments and thereby enhance understanding, functionality is needed to decompose (drill down) and aggregate (drill up) various PRO scores.

Quote from Provider Interviews:

“I would most commonly like to see them all at once and then I will zoom into the ones that I care about.”

Strategy A
Provide drill down capabilities that allow users to zoom in to increasing levels of information granularity within ePRO reports

Generally, PRO instruments comprise multiple questions. In reporting PRO data, different levels of response detail are needed for various clinical situations and to present a complete picture. Sometimes the final score associated with an algorithm based on these questions (e.g., sum or mean of all question responses) is what is most clinically relevant, but there are occasions when more granular information may be useful. To make ePRO reports more valuable for clinical decision-making, reporting tools should include a means to drill down as well as drill up among the various levels of PRO data (e.g., allow providers to view various levels of PRO data detail including aggregated PRO scores, domain scores, subscale scores, and individual item scores).

Providing functionality that allows the user to navigate among levels of information offers the means to drill down from a summary page of PRO scores to a particular score of interest, and then to drill all the way down to individual items on a PRO instrument (as illustrated in Figure 4I). Drill down options for a PRO should be evident by visual cues embedded in the report (e.g., hover text indicating that drill down is available).

Figure 4I: Flow of potential drill down levels beginning with dashboard
Diagram showing a potential path through a tree of options, starting with a Patient ePRO Dashboard.
Strategy B
Provide drill up (aggregating) capabilities that allow users to zoom out for a more comprehensive view of PRO data

Drilling up PRO scores by including PRO data from multiple assessment instruments on a single screen (e.g., multiple graphics on a dashboard) can also improve the clinical usefulness of PRO data. Various PRO assessments that can be aggregated on a dashboard may relate to one or more clinical domains. Figure 4J depicts this type of aggregation.

Figure 4J: Flow of moving from aggregating multiple PROs on one dashboard/screen to individual PRO graphs
Diagram showing a single screen of a Patient ePRO Dashboard, with three options to expand on individual items.

A dashboard can be used as a means to aggregate by serving as a summary page composed of various means of representing PRO scores (e.g., table or graphic) as well as scores from various instruments; this is similar to an aggregation of lab values in other contexts. Figure 4K depicts a dashboard that shows various types of graphics for individual PRO scores. Dashboards may provide a thumbnail visualization that can be selected to see larger/more expansive views of individual graphs.

Figure 4K: Various types of graphics on one dashboard
Four different graphics: a bar chart, a line graph, a pie chart, and another bar chart, all showing the patient's data either rolled up into or compared with a larger group.