JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Patients with cancer spend most of their time in their homes, but their condition is under constant change as a result of the treatment they receive. Patients' performance status (PS) and their symptoms assessments have typically only been collected during clinic visits. Developing a secure and reliable remote monitoring system is a necessity that can be achieved with an inexpensive consumer-based activity tracker. The real-time data captured by wearable activity trackers could provide a dynamic view of patients for clinicians to make an informed treatment.

Objective:

This study aims to assess the practicality of a consumer-based activity tracker for remote monitoring of gastrointestinal cancer patients.

Methods:

Twenty-seven consenting patients (63% male, median age 58 years) wore a consumer-based activity tracker seven days before chemotherapy, and fourteen days after receiving their first treatment. The clinician assessed patients' ECOG-PS and Memorial Symptom Assessment Checklist-Short Form (MSAS-SF) for patients pre- and post-chemotherapy. The statistical correlation between ECOG-PS and MSAS-SF of patients with their step count was assessed.

Results:

The daily step count had the highest correlation with the patients' ECOG-PS after chemotherapy (P = 6.4e-11). The patients with higher ECOG-PS experienced a higher fluctuation in their step count. The patients who walked more (mean: 6071 steps per day) pre-chemotherapy and (mean: 5930 steps per day) post-chemotherapy had a lower MSAS score (less burden of symptoms) compared to patients who walked less (mean: 5205 steps per day) pre-chemotherapy and (mean: 4437 steps per day) post-chemotherapy.

Conclusions:

This study demonstrates the feasibility of inexpensive, consumer-based activity trackers in monitoring patients’ PS and MSAS in the gastrointestinal cancer population. The findings need to be validated in a larger population for generalizability.