What is the Best Way to Assess Functional Health?: The History of the Development and Application of the Patient Reported Outcome Measurement Information System (PROMIS).

For more than seven decades, the World Health Organization has defined health as a "state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." Among researchers and clinicians, translation of this definition into outcomes measurements has proven challenging. The Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) is an initiative connected to the National Institutes of Health Roadmap for Medical Research. Recently, this tool was successfully applied in a comparative evaluation of intervention models (the Functional Medicine model versus the standard-of-care model for primary medicine) in patients with chronic health complaints. This study demonstrated that information derived from validated patient-reported outcomes surveys can be used to design clinical research approaches focused on improving health and well-being.