JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Patients with head and neck cancer (HNC) experience severe side effects during radiotherapy (RT). Ongoing technological advances in wearable biometric sensors allow for collection of objective data e.g. physical activity and heart rate, which in the future might help to detect and act against side effects before they become severe. A smartwatch such as the Apple Watch allows for objective data monitoring outside the hospital with minimal effort for the patient. To find out if such tools can be implemented in the oncological setting, feasibility studies are needed.

Objective:

This paper describes the design of the OncoWatch 1.0 feasibility study testing the HNC patient’s adherence to an Apple Watch during RT.

Methods:

A prospective, single cohort trial will be conducted at Rigshospitalet, Department of Oncology, Denmark. Patients ≥18 years planned to primary or post-operative curatively intended radiotherapy for HNC are eligible. Consenting patients will be asked to wear an Apple Watch on the wrist during radiotherapy and until 2 weeks after end of RT. The study will include 10 patients. Data on adherence, data acquisition, and biometric data will be collected. Demographic data, objective toxicity scores and hospitalizations will be documented.

Results:

The primary outcome is to determine if it is feasible for the patients to wear a smartwatch continuously (minimum 12 hours/day) during radiotherapy. Secondly, we will explore how the heart rate and physical activity change over the treatment course.

Conclusions:

The study will assess the feasibility of using the Apple Watch for home monitoring of patients with HNC. It will bring new insights to the patient’s activity levels and how heart rate varies during a treatment course. This is important knowledge before further investigating how biometric data can be used as part of symptom monitoring. Clinical Trial: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04613232