Electronic patient-reported outcomemonitoring (ePROM) in brain tumour patients

Abstract

The diagnosis of brain tumour commonly goes along with short survival, bad outcome prognosis and strongly impaired health-related quality of life (HRQOL) due to the disease itself, anti-cancer treatment or ancillary medication. Patient-reported outcome monitoring (PROM) ensures the capture of individual problematic issues threatening patients’ HRQOL for a targeted and patient-tailored intervention. Practical barriers of PROM can be avoided by electronic data capture (ePROM), which saves time, human resources and can help to deepen patientphysician communication and to improve patients’ satisfaction with care. Furthermore, tele-monitoring incorporates usually neglected time points when patients are discharged from hospital and symptom burden is only partly communicated to physicians and nurses. For comprehensive health care of brain tumour patients the usage of ePROM and tele-monitoring could help to meet the patients’ needs.