Patient-reported outcome (PRO) refers to any information about the patient's own health condition, functional status, and feelings about treatment that directly comes from the patient without interpretation by physicians, nurses or anyone else. Measuring outcomes from the patient perspective is conducive to improving the quality of medical services and treatment satisfaction. We summarized recent applications of PRO in many fields, such as drug review and approval, drug and medical equipment supervision, quality evaluation of medical services, health technology assessment, and comprehensive clinical evaluation of drugs, and reviewed the latest advances in research on PRO, such as the development of PRO instruments, the construction of a health state utility value set, the health measurement in children and adolescents, and the quality evaluation of PRO instruments. Then we put forward recommendations to further promote the studies and use of PRO in China: strengthening the development of PRO instruments applicable to China, valuing the use of PRO in clinical practice, enhancing the interdisciplinary research on PRO, broadening the profile of research on PRO, and intensifying relevant research.
