Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
Empowerment or Burden? Cancer Patients' Experiences with Wearable Devices for Symptom Management: A Systematic Review and Qualitative Meta-Synthesis
ABSTRACT
Background:
Cancer and its therapies create a substantial symptom burden on patients, profoundly affecting their quality of life. Wearable Devices provide the potential for enhanced symptom management through the passive monitoring of patients to produce health data. Nevertheless, current research mostly emphasizes technological feasibility and quantitative results, failing to provide a systematic synthesis of patients' experiences with these passive monitoring devices.
Objective:
This study aims to conduct a systematic review of the existing literature through a qualitative meta-synthesis methodology to comprehensively understand cancer patients' experiences with wearable devices for symptom management.
Methods:
The proposed study will follow the ENTREQ guidelines. The literature will be searched in nine English and Chinese databases until September 2025. Only qualitative studies, or the qualitative components of mixed-methods research, that investigate cancer patients' subjective experiences with wearable devices for symptom management will be considered. The quality of studies will be assessed by using the CASP checklist, while thematic synthesis will be used for data synthesis. The believability of evidence will be assessed by using ConQual.
Results:
Eight studies were considered, with the level of research quality estimated as moderate to high. The meta-synthesis identified two main themes. (1) Data empowerment-from passive perception to active management. This indicated how the technology empowers patients by quantifying data, improving doctor-patient communication, promoting healthy practices, and providing psychological relief. (2) Coexisting new burdens-the challenge of implementing this technology into daily life. This theme refers to the physical as well as psychological toll of adapting to the device among patients. The final confidence rating for all synthesized findings was high.
Conclusions:
This inaugural qualitative meta-synthesis reveals a dual experience: data empowerment coexists with significant physical and psychological burdens. We identify a critical gap between current passive recording capabilities and patients' need for actionable insights. Future implementation depends not merely on balancing this duality, but on evolving technology toward context-aware and emotionally adaptive intelligence, ensuring equitable clinical access, and shifting research focus from feasibility to clinical efficacy. Clinical Trial: CRD420251151838
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
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.