The past, present, and future of patient-reported outcomes in oncology.

Patient-reported outcomes capture a unique and important perspective of oncology therapy. Surveys to properly capture patient-reported outcome measures have been under development for more than 2 decades. More recent efforts to understand the clinical significance of patient-reported outcomes, called performance measures, are underway. Patient-reported outcomes can be used in a variety of ways, including therapy decisions for an individual patient, payment for treatment, research into disease progression, or new drug development. Technology has already enabled electronic systems to capture and search patient-reported outcomes and in the future will assist in capturing everyday activities, which, in combination with improved informatics to sort the meaningful and actionable information, will reduce the time commitment for both patients and providers.