PROMIS, FACT-B, and FACT-G are validated questionnaires — sometimes called patient-reported outcome measures, or PROMs — that turn how you actually feel into structured, comparable scores. In survivorship, they help you and your care team measure things that scans and bloodwork miss: fatigue, mood, sleep, physical function, and overall quality of life. They are tools for understanding and conversation, not diagnostic tests.
What is a patient-reported outcome measure?
A patient-reported outcome measure is a standardized questionnaire you complete yourself, capturing your experience in your own words rather than a clinician’s observation. Because everyone answers the same validated questions, the results can be compared over time and across people — which makes a vague sense of “I feel worse lately” into something concrete you can track and discuss. These measures are widely used in cancer research and increasingly in routine survivorship care.
What does PROMIS measure?
PROMIS stands for the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System, a set of measures developed with U.S. National Institutes of Health funding and managed by HealthMeasures at Northwestern University. PROMIS covers physical, mental, and social health through short question banks on topics such as physical function, fatigue, pain, sleep disturbance, anxiety, depression, and the ability to participate in social roles.
PROMIS scores use a standardized T-score, where 50 represents the average for the U.S. general population and every 10 points is one standard deviation. For a symptom like fatigue, a higher score means more fatigue; for a positive area like physical function, a higher score means better function. That common scale is what lets a single number carry real meaning — and what makes change over time easy to see.
What is FACT-G?
FACT-G — the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy – General — is one of the most widely used quality-of-life questionnaires in oncology. Maintained by FACIT.org, it asks about four areas of wellbeing over the past week: physical, social and family, emotional, and functional. Together these produce a total score in which higher means better overall quality of life. Because it is general, FACT-G works across many cancer types and is a common starting point.
What is FACT-B, and how is it different?
FACT-B is the breast-cancer-specific version. It includes all of FACT-G and adds a Breast Cancer Subscale — extra questions about concerns that matter specifically after breast cancer, such as body image, arm swelling and lymphedema, and treatment side effects. If you are navigating breast cancer survivorship, FACT-B captures detail a general measure would miss. The relationship is simple: FACT-B = FACT-G + breast-cancer questions.
How are these questionnaires used in survivorship?
You might encounter them in a clinic visit, a research study, or a digital survivorship program. Used over time, they turn scattered symptoms into trends — which is far more useful than judging any single hard day. A rising fatigue score across several check-ins, for example, is a concrete prompt to raise cancer-related fatigue with your team. This is also why bringing your own notes helps: see our guide to preparing for survivorship appointments and the questions worth asking your oncologist.
These measures pair naturally with a survivorship care plan, which records your treatment and a forward-looking follow-up plan. Where the care plan sets the map, validated questionnaires help you see where you are on it.
How does Oncera relate to these measures?
Oncera is grounded in the same survivorship research these instruments come from, organizing hundreds of signals into seven clear domains and tracking how they change over time. Oncera is educational and non-diagnostic: it does not calculate a clinical FACT-B or PROMIS score for medical decisions, and it never replaces validated assessment by your care team. Instead, it helps you understand the same dimensions of wellbeing in plain language and arrive prepared for the conversations where those measures are interpreted.
This article is educational and non-diagnostic. Questionnaire results should be interpreted with your own care team, who can place them in the context of your full medical picture.