Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Oct 27, 2023
Open Peer Review Period: Oct 13, 2023 - Dec 8, 2023
Date Accepted: Apr 23, 2024
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Acceptability, Effectiveness and Roles of mHealth Applications in Supporting Cancer Pain Self-Management: An Integrative Review
ABSTRACT
Background:
Cancer pain remains highly prevalent and persistent throughout survivorship, and it is crucial to investigate the potential of leveraging the advanced features of mHealth apps to empower individuals to self-manage their pain.
Objective:
This review aims to comprehensively understand the acceptability, pain outcome improvement, and the roles of mHealth apps in supporting cancer pain self-management.
Methods:
An integrative review followed Souza & Whittemore & Knafl’s six review processes. Literature was searched in PubMed, Scopus, CINAHL Plus with Full Text, PsycINFO, and Embase, from 2013 to 2023. The keywords or controlled vocabulary included cancer patients, pain, self-management, mHealth applications, and relevant synonyms. The Johns Hopkins research evidence appraisal tool evaluated the quality of eligible studies. A narrative synthesis was conducted to analyze the extracted data.
Results:
A total of 20 studies were included. The overall quality of the studies was evaluated as high (n=15) to good (n=5). Using mHealth apps to monitor or manage pain was acceptable for most patients with cancer. The internal consistency of mHealth pain measure was 0.96. Daily assessment or reporting engagement rate ranged from 61.9% to 76.8%. mHealth apps were used as multimodal interventions in the studies. Participants had a positive experience using pain apps, finding them enjoyable and user-friendly. Six studies reported that mHealth apps had significant (p<.05) benefits for pain remission (severity and intensity), medication adherence, and a lower frequency of breakthrough pain. The most frequently highlighted roles of mHealth apps included pain monitor/tracker/reminder, pain education facilitator, and pain support coordinator.
Conclusions:
mHealth apps are effective and acceptable in supporting self-management. They offer a promising multi-model approach for patients to monitor, track, and manage their pain. These findings provide evidence-based insights for leveraging mHealth apps to support cancer pain self-management. Further research is needed to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of mHealth implications in geographically or economically disadvantaged cancer groups. Clinical Trial: Null
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Copyright
© 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.