An Editorial on Tailoring Patient-Reported Outcomes to the Individual Patient: Precision PROs

Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) have the potential to improve clinical care. One barrier to implementing PROs and maximizing their effectiveness is difficulty individualizing PROs. To address this barrier, we propose a precision PRO methodology. By this approach, patients would first define a minimally important difference for themselves. Patients would then choose which items within a PRO item bank are most important to them; these items would be used to monitor patients’ progress. Patients could be compared to each other – even if they chose different questions – using modern psychometric methods. We propose future research to guide how to determine the simplest and most effective precision PRO methodology.