Journal de santé et d'informatique médicale

A Mobile Cancer Follow-up Care Plan for Patient Empowerment

Abstract

Kerstin Denecke*,Tim L Dorner,Rea Iseli,Sarah Mele,Mauro Tschanz,Carsten T Viehl,Michael Lehmann,Thomas Bürkle

An increasing prevalence of cancer requires new ways of supporting outpatients and improving their compliance to treatment. Initial mostly surgical treatment is followed by long-term surveillance to detect and treat cancer recurrence timely. Depending on the tumor stage, the frequencies of follow-up appointments differ and the patient has to remember to make these appointments at the right time. Currently, the patient receives a paper-based schema indicating the follow-up schedule. Since this document is difficult to understand or may get lost, patients are missing the follow-up appointments. This paper illustrates our attempt at exploiting mHealth to support the empowerment and awareness in outpatients by a mobile, bilingual app that supports variable cancer follow-up schedules. Installed on a mobile device, the app reminds the patient to schedule his appointments timely and provides additional information about disease and treatment. Equipped with additional functionalities for monitoring vital parameters, the app can be used for continuous monitoring. The usability was studied with nine persons. We conclude that the app provides a good basis for a successful product after realizing some extensions and improvements of the usability.