JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Thyroid Cancer (TC) is one of the fastest growing cancers all over the world. When appropriate treatment is given, the prognosis of the disease is generally excellent. Despite the generally good prognosis of thyroid carcinomas, the symptoms may have a broad range from emotional to physical discomfort, depending on the thyroid hormone status, which can affect the patient severely. Moreover, the diagnostic and therapeutic procedures such as thyroidectomy and radioiodine therapy that the differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) patients have to undergo, affect quiet a lot their mental and physical well-being. The physician often only sees the favorable prognosis of DTC compared with other cancer types and neglects to address quality of life issues, which was the initial for us to design a mobile application for DTC patients and their caregivers.

Objective:

The aim of the current project is to investigate the feasibility and applicability of a mHealth application tailored to DTC patients, as reflected in their Quality of Life (QoL). The main features of the developed app offer access to useful information about thyroid cancer, diagnostic tests and therapy administrated in DTC patients.

Methods:

Based on the current literature, we created an up-to-date, information platform regarding TC. In order to develop an effective application that can successfully be implemented in current health care, we also designed a section where the patient and his physician can keep a medical record, on an effort to enable access on such information at any time. Finally, we designed a user friendly notification program, which include pill, follow up tests and doctor visits’ reminder to make our patients’ and physicians’ lives easier.

Results:

Having developed this mobile app we aim to conduct a pilot quasi-experimental interventional trial. Our intention is to enroll at least 30 TC patients and assign them to intervention or control groups. They will both receive standard care for treating and monitoring TC, while interventional group will also receive and use TC app.

Conclusions:

TC patients’ QoL will be assessed for both control and interventional groups, in order to examine the effectiveness of TC app. QoL will be assessed through the quality of life core questionnaire EORTC QLQ-THY34 in combination with EORTC QLQ-C30 questionnaire through quantitative statistical analysis. The EORTC QoL module for thyroid cancer consisting of 34 items is currently pilot-tested and ready for the final international field validation in phase IV. To the best of our knowledge the EORTC QLQ-THY34 is the most appropriate instrument dedicated to TC patients to evaluate the impact of our intervention to their QoL and therefore its usefulness and effectiveness.