gms | German Medical Science

Background: Regulators and payers increasingly esteem real world evidence to evaluate which drugs are beneficial to individual and public health. In this context patient reported outcomes (PROs) assessing symptoms, findings, functional health, well-being and psychological issues from the patients’ perspective are increasingly important for stakeholders in order to overcome challenges of long-term tolerability, safety and effectiveness. Additionally, PROs can help to optimize therapy strategies through real-time symptom monitoring and tailoring the care individually to the patient’s needs.

Materials and Methods: A web-based health portal named Virtual Tool for Education, Reporting, Information and Outcomes (VITERIO), which addresses these needs for practice and research was established by a consortium of scientists, medical doctors and a foundation [1]. Data quality standards [2] have been considered and a sound data security concept has been established.

Results: A data set of indicators for health screening and self-monitoring of findings, symptoms, health behaviour, and attitudes has been integrated into the web-based health portal VITERIO. The established set of indicators can be expanded and customized for any clinical application or for the use in the general practice. The portal has been designed with two independent access opportunities: from the patient side (PROMI - Patient-Reported Outcomes, Measurement and Information) and from the therapist’s side (PROFI - Provider Reported Outcomes of Findings and Interventions). Mobile tools for monitoring single patients or groups have been integrated which makes VITERIO a valuable instrument for clinical trials and medical practice. For patient training and health literacy tutorials and instructions that can be downloaded on demand have been deposited.

Here we show exemplarily some implemented graphical solutions and developed tools and give examples for the daily use.

Conclusion: Our web-based health portal VITERIO can be applied in medical practice and clinical trials for digital data acquisition and analysis of outcomes and for quality assurance. The comprehensive data collection through VITERIO guarantees data integrity which offers many opportunities for longitudinal assessments. Furthermore, through active participation of the patients, therapies can be tailored to their specific needs. Thereby patients’ adherence and the efficacy of drugs can be enhanced.