A Digital Cancer Ecosystem to Deliver Health and Psychosocial Education as Preventive Intervention.

Abstract

Simple SummaryWith the recent increase in survival rates of breast cancer patients, it is of key importance to also improve their life quality. Disinformation regarding illness is one of the major stress sources for patients with breast cancer. The present study aimed to study the educational section of the digital ecosystem ICOnnecta’t, analyzing which health information areas are most relevant for breast cancer patients. The fact that patients mostly consulted emotional and medical audiovisual material within the first three months after diagnosis underlines the need to create significant health-related content and deliver it to patients shortly after diagnosis. Those preventive interventions are essential to avoid the deterioration of emotional distress, which in turn has been shown to influence, not only life quality, but also patient survival.Health education and psychosocial interventions prevent emotional distress, and the latter has been shown to have an impact on survival. In turn, digital health education interventions may help promote equity by reaching a higher number of cancer patients, both because they avoid journeys to the hospital, by and having a better efficiency. A total of 234 women recently diagnosed with breast cancer in a comprehensive cancer center used the digital ecosystem ICOnnecta’t from March 2019 to March 2021. ICOnnecta’t consists of four care levels, provided to patients according to their level of distress. The second level of this intervention consists of an educational campus, which was analyzed to track users’ interests and their information-seeking behavior. Overall, 99 out of 234 women (42.3%) used the educational campus. There were no significant differences in sociodemographic and clinical variables between the campus users and non-users. Among users, the median number of resources utilized per user was four (interquartile range: 2–9). Emotional and medical resources were the contents most frequently viewed and the audiovisual format the most consulted (p < 0.01). Resources were used mainly within the first three months from enrolment. Users who were guided to visit the virtual campus were more active than spontaneous users. Offering an early holistic health educational platform inside a digital cancer ecosystem, with health professionals involved, can reach more patients, promoting equity in the access of cancer information and prevention, from the very beginning of the disease.