Barriers to widespread implementation of patient-reported outcome platforms for cancer patients.

Abstract

107 Background: Patient-reported outcome (PRO) platforms for cancer patients have shown to be effective in improving overall survival, quality of life, and adherence to medication in studies. However, due to controlled environments and limited regional scope, they do not shed light on the barriers for widespread PRO implementation. This study aims to identify such barriers by studying user demographics and usage patterns of an existing free Brazilian PRO mobile app. Methods: From Dec. 2016 to Jul. 2018, 1,246 cancer patients voluntarily registered on the mobile app downloadable on Google Play Store. Patients could report symptoms, physical activity, hours of sleep, weight, fever, overall well-being, and reasons for gratitude on the app. Other features included alarms for medications and a record of patients' hospitals and medical staff. Data collected by the app were analyzed for primary outcomes of user demographics and app usage patterns. Results: Out of the 1,246 registered patients, 44.1% were between the ages of 20 and 49 while only 11.3% were over the age of 65. Half of the patients never logged symptoms, and only 3.2% recorded symptoms more than 10 times. Physical activity, hours of sleep, and weight were each reported by less than 2% of patients. Surprisingly, 37.7% of patients recorded reasons for gratitude a mean of 3.2 times (SD = 10.3), more than the mean 2.9 times (SD = 8.6) that patients reported symptoms. Reporting overall well-being was the most used feature with 50.3% of patients having used it at least once with a mean of 3.9 times (SD = 17.2). Conclusions: Compared to closed short-term small-scale studies, patients engaged significantly less with the unrestricted open-access PRO platform, in particular geriatric patients. This is a significant barrier to widespread implementation as PRO's efficacy relies on consistent patient reports, and as cancer is more common among the elderly. These issues may be due to lack of guidance and supervision from medical/non-medical staff, absence of education on PRO's purpose, or access to technology caused by regional cultural differences. Further research on the cause of and solution for low patient engagement is needed for successful implementation in less-guided environments.