What with the buzz about mobile health apps not being effective, mHealth researchers are launching a study to determine if a smartphone application can help cancer patients better manage their chemotherapy regimen and, in doing so, improve their clinical outcomes.
The Center for Connected Health, a division of Partners HealthCare, will conduct the three-month, randomized trial, involving 104 cancer patients recruited from Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The McKesson Foundation is financing the study through its Mobilizing for Health initiative, the third year in a row that McKesson has issued a research grant to the center.
According to officials, patients in the study – all of whom will be on an oral chemotherapy program – will be issued a smartphone app that will deliver information about medication adherence and symptoms, as well as information on how to assess the severity and frequency of symptoms. The information will be designed to help patients manage their symptoms, including strategies to deal with and prevent side effects; a medication-tracking device built into the app will give them feedback on symptom control and medication adherence.
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"Oral chemotherapy is quickly becoming the treatment of choice due to their ease of administration and potential cost savings. However, patients often do not adhere to treatment because of severe side effects, inadequate supervision in the home setting and misinformation," said Kamal Jethwani, MD, MPH, the center's corporate manager for research and innovation and principal investigator for the study, in a press release. "This personalized and targeted mobile-based program will aim to engage patients, to break down barriers to adherence, decrease adverse side effects and improve quality of life."
Joseph C. Kvedar, MD, the center's director, explained in the release that by leveraging mobile health technologies, "we can potentially provide intensive interventions currently delivered by oncology nurses, physicians and pharmacy-based care management programs."
Improving patient engagement through digital technology has long been one of Kvedar's goals at the center, which offers remote monitoring programs for people with chronic diseases. This past July, the center completed a study that indicated people who could collect biometric data and send that data to healthcare providers through wireless devices were more likely to adhere to a disease management plan than people who reported their data back to providers by telephone modem-based devices.
The McKesson Foundation, launched in 1943, is the charitable arm of the health IT giant, donating more than $5 million each year to non-profits working to improve the health of their communities. The Mobilizing for Health initiative, launched in 2010, targets mHealth and has funded more than a dozen research studies over the past three years.
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