Development and Evaluation of a Mobile App for Radiotherapy Patient Education

Abstract

Radiotherapy is an area that is at times complex, with multiple steps to take and great variety of side effect profiles between treatments. It is also an area that patients know little about before their first consultation. This makes it confusing and due to time constraints physicians may not always have the time to fully explain everything that should be covered. Patients may then persist with doubts or recur to online information, which is at times inaccurate. It was hypothesized that there is a high informational need among radiotherapy patients that could be aided by using a mobile app. A mobile app for Android and IOS was developed to address patient informational needs called Canswer. The mobile app format was chosen due to ease of access for patients and to integrate all the information formats (infographics, videos, and 3D models) on a single hub. Patients that came to their first radio-oncology consultation were gifted the app through the app store to review at home and asked to fill out a survey in a third level public hospital in Mexico. Likert scales were used to analyze patient perception using validated questionnaires. A subsequent survey was performed after the start of their treatment to evaluate how their perceptions changed and their final opinion on the app. On the analysis of 100 patients the average age of respondents was 50 years. Regarding the medical consultation 45% agreed/strongly agreed that it was too short, 33% that everything was not fully explained, and 31% had doubts after it ended. 24% reported they were not sure which symptoms were urgent or when to visit the ER. Concerning informational needs 81% of patients reported they would like to receive more information to review at home and 93% that the app will be useful. The patients wished to know more about: alarm signs during treatment (70%), treatment process (70%), managing side effects (67%), and anxiety/depression (38%). The app currently holds a 5.0 score with 58 reviews on the app store and 90% of patients would recommend the app to a family member. 75% of patients reported using the app after their initial consultation. The average content reviewed was 67% of the total content. The section that was the most well received was the infographics. 78% reported they felt calmer after reviewing the information. Regarding feedback patients wished more information on nutrition was included and more images were added. Based on the results there is a high informational need among patients and the app helped them review the most important information at home. A common finding among the patients was that they persisted with doubts after their appointment and that it was too short to fully explain everything radiotherapy entails. In general, the app was well received but there is still room for improvement. Future updates and investigations based on these initial findings are warranted to expand into other areas of cancer care.