Patient Reported Outcome (PRO) methods are used in clinical trials or other clinical settings, to help better understand treatment's efficacy. PRO is a health outcome directly reported by the patient who experiences it, contrary to any other outcome reported by someone else, such as the physician or the nurse.

Patient reported outcomes typically include information about general health status and perceptions, quality of life (QoL), symptoms, functioning, adherence to prescribed medications and ratings of given healthcare.

As the clinical research industry is driven to a more patient-centric approach, the utility of PROs in the clinical and marketing decision-making process has a continuously increasing rate, accelerated by the quality and real-time accessed data offered by electronic patient reported outcomes (e-PROs).