Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Feb 26, 2019
Open Peer Review Period: Mar 1, 2019 - Apr 26, 2019
Date Accepted: Jul 21, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Impact of a smartphone application on health-related quality of life for adolescents and young adults with cancer.
ABSTRACT
Background:
Adolescent and young adult (AYA) cancer patients are a group with underexplored needs throughout treatment and in survivorship. This missing knowledge can influence quality of life. Given this fact, we have developed a smartphone application based on a cocreation process. This app contains three main features (1) a symptom and activity diary, (2) a communication network between app users, and (3) an information database incl. video content. An AYA co-creation process was utilized to determine app content and design. The evaluation protocol for the app, which has been published previously, includes different evaluation stages. One stage is pilot testing with investigation of quality of life among users. Future research is warranted to determine the effect of mobile health (mHealth) tools such as smartphone apps among the AYA cancer population.
Objective:
To investigate the impact of a smartphone application on the health-related quality of life among AYA with cancer, including patients in active treatment and cancer survivors, in a pilot test.
Methods:
Participants were recruited via the youth support initiative and social organisation for AYAs with cancer, Kræftværket, based at University Hospital Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen, Denmark. Participants in active treatment and post treatment were recruited evenly. After written informed consent, all participants were asked to use the app ‘Kræftværket’ as they saw appropriate over a 6-week period. The participants were asked to complete the EORTC QLQ-C30 before and after the 6-week period. The collected quality of life (QoL) data was analysed with t-tests to determine differences between groups and from baseline.
Results:
Twenty participants, 10 in active treatment and 10 post treatment (median time after treatment was 4 months), were enrolled. Median age of the participants was 25 years. No differences in quality of life was seen at baseline (P=0.65). The post-treatment group experienced a significant increase in overall QoL after the 6-week period (P=0.04). For the group in active treatment, the QoL remained stable throughout the 6 weeks.
Conclusions:
This study shows the feasibility and positive effect on quality of life by use of an mHealth tool in AYA patients. More mHealth support tools are warranted for this population.
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© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.