Published: 26-03-2018

Patient involvement with treatment decisions can be a key factor in compliance and adherence, which have knock on effects for otherwise preventable costs and resource use.

A range of instruments are available for assessing patient involvement, however only a few are used widely, and overall there is a limited number of publications that include a measure of patient involvement.

Using the specialised search filters in the heoro.com database, and importing the results into a custom Evidence Map, we have identified interesting patterns of use for PRO tools assessing patient involvement.

We ran the search from 1960 to January 2018 and analysed the abstracts identified by the search to determine the range of geographical locations, disease types, interventions and study methodologies.

Using an Evidence Map to present the findings we were able to easily explore the results. Examples are shown below, and to download a free copy of the map click here. To use the Map, open it in Excel and enable macros.

The search identified 66 independent abstracts with 22 relevant PRO tools (listed below with a count of the abstracts that reported using the tool).

With the PRO tools assessing patient involvement in treatment decisions, very few of the abstracts included interventions to increase or support patients’ understanding of or role in the decision-making process.

The abstracts identified ranged in publication dates from 1987 to 2018, with an interesting peak in publications between 2000 and 2004. When displayed as a function of the location of the studies it is possible to see that all of these studies were conducted either in the USA, Canada, or Europe.

 You can download a free copy of the Evidence Map here.

Written and Created Cassie Springate

Researcher at Crystallise