Data Visualization Strategies to Communicate PRO Data to Patients and Clinicians

The assessment of patient-reported outcomes (PROs) has tremendous potential to inform clinical practice by reflecting patients’ perspectives on their health condition and/or related treatment. Whether PROs are assessed as part of an individual’s care (e.g., for symptom assessment or monitoring) or as part of research (e.g., observational studies or evaluating intervention impacts), their value depends on patients and clinicians accurately interpreting PRO data and understanding the meaning of the scores. This chapter provides a summary of the considerations that can make PRO data visualization challenging. This chapter also presents seven key themes based on an interpretive summary of the research literature addressing the optimal visual presentation of PROs to patients and clinicians. This chapter concludes with a summary of recently published evidence-based, stakeholder-driven recommendations for graphic display of both individual-level patient and the group-level research PRO data.