The principle of personalised care has always been the cornerstone of quality oncology practice but, until recently the focus was more on precision therapeutics as a means to personalisation of care. But as the evidence shows that access, uptake and the benefits of precision therapeutics are not uniformly realized for all people with cancer, there is a growing interest in the patients’ perspective on needs, priorities and preferences leading to greater utilisation of Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) as part of routine cancer care.
In this presentation I will review the benefits of PROMs use in clinical cancer care and their potential as a “great equalizer” that can not only assist in individual patient care but also inform future care (and research) priorities. I will summarise the current initiatives to adoption of PROMs into practice in Australia and offer some practical tools that may assist in their uptake in diverse cancer care settings.