Adopting patient-centered care in standard practice: PROMs moving toward disease-specific era

Past discussions about the challenges of using patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) in clinical practice included clinicians' skepticism, time and resources for the implementation, validity of the PROMs, unfamiliarity with the interpretation of PROMs, and costs of implementation. However, these concerns are diminishing now as PROMs has confirmed its place in the management of patients with inflammatory arthritic conditions where there is no surrogate outcome measure available to capture the patient's well-being and response to treatment. Therefore, PROMs has been endorsed as a primary outcome in clinical trials. PROMs directly measure treatment benefit beyond survival, disease, and physiologic markers, and are often the outcomes of greatest importance to patients. Recently, PROMs has progressed from the generic phase into a 'disease-specific' era. This article will discuss the evolving role of PROMs in the assessment and management of patients suffering from inflammatory arthritic conditions and how it can help in transforming patient-centered care concept into reality.