Model clinical use of ePRO reports
The value proposition of introducing ePROs to the clinical care process is contingent on not only the knowledge gained from well-designed ePRO reports, but also on the effective use of the reports to bring increased intelligence and wisdom into the care process. Reporting is the result of report design and use depicted in Figure 4S (further discussed at the beginning of this section). Unfortunately, not all organizations or even patient encounters will achieve the full potential of intelligent use of ePROs to increase wisdom in healthcare decision-making and care processes that may be gained. Indeed, the successful use of even the most well-designed ePRO reports is dependent on the characteristics and capacities of individual healthcare organizations and ePRO users.

Health systems are well advised to model strategies for ePRO report use to facilitate moving successfully from PRO data collection to ePRO report development to using the reports to improve patient care and shared decision-making efforts (i.e., to move from data to wisdom). Specifically, modeling successful use of ePRO reports can help avoid unintended consequences associated with the introduction of ePROs into the care process as well as enhance the potential positive impact of ePROs. Keys to this guideline and the concept of modeling include:
- the involvement of stakeholders to inform “use quality” (i.e., meaningful use) of ePROs within each health system and clinical specialty context
- a user centered perspective of ePRO use