JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Physical activity is associated with prognosis in post-treatment cancer survivors and may decrease the risk of adverse effects of treatment. Accordingly, physical activity programs are recommended as part of cancer rehabilitation services. Digital technology may support cancer survivors to increased physical activity, increase the reach and/or efficiency of cancer rehabilitation services but also comes with a range of challenges.

Objective:

The aim of this qualitative study was to understand cancer survivors’ beliefs and reasons for their receptiveness to use digital technology as supplement for physical activity as part of their rehabilitation program to make recommendations for optimized design of digital technologies in this setting.

Methods:

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 cancer survivors who were referred for cancer rehabilitation and had participated in a questionnaire survey using the Readiness and Enablement for Health Technology (READHY) questionnaire. Data analysis followed the content analysis method.

Results:

Two themes were identified as important for the informants’ receptiveness to use digital technology services in connection with their physical activity during rehabilitation: their attitude towards physical activity and their attitude towards digital technology assisted physical activity. These two themes informed a third theme: design implications. Our findings point towards three components that should be addressed when designing or employing digital technology to facilitate increased physical activity in relation to physical activity cancer rehabilitation: incidental physical activity or exercise activities; social or individual; instruction (know how) or explanation (know why).

Conclusions:

To accommodate a broad range of cancer survivors, digital technologies for physical activity should offer a palette of technologies, e.g. in the form of a multicomponent platform or a repository. The technologies should span incidental to structured physical activity, that could be either social/group oriented or individual and support information in the form of instruction (know how) to explanation (know why).