Abstract
BackgroundWe developed Supportive care Prioritization, Assessment and Recommendations for Kids (SPARK), a web-based application designed to facilitate symptom screening by children receiving cancer treatments and access to supportive care clinical practice guidelines primarily by healthcare providers. The objective was to describe the initial development and evaluation of SPARK from the perspective of children.ImplementationDevelopment and evaluation occurred in three phases: (1) low fidelity focused on functionality, (2) design focused on “look and feel” and (3) high fidelity confirmed functionality and design. Cognitive interviews were conducted with children receiving cancer treatments 8–18 years of age. Evaluation occurred after every five interviews and changes were guided by a Review Panel. Quantitative evaluation included SPARK ease of use and understandability of SPARK reports.ResultsThe number of children included by phase were: low fidelity (n = 30), design (n = 30) and high fidelity (n = 30). Across phases, the median age was 13.2 (range 8.5 to 18.4) years. During low-fidelity and design phases, iterative refinements to SPARK improved website navigation, usability and likability from the perspective of children and established symptom report design. Among the last 10 children enrolled to high-fidelity testing, all (100%) understood how to complete symptom screening, access reports and interpret reports. Among these 10 respondents, all (100%) found SPARK easy to use and 9 (90%) found SPARK reports were easy to understand.ConclusionsSPARK is a web-based application which is usable and understandable, and it is now appropriate to use for research. Future efforts will focus on clinical implementation of SPARK.
Highlights
We developed Supportive care Prioritization, Assessment and Recommendations for Kids (SPARK), a web-based application designed to facilitate symptom screening by children receiving cancer treatments and access to supportive care clinical practice guidelines primarily by healthcare providers
SPARK is a web-based application which is usable and understandable, and it is appropriate to use for research
Future efforts will focus on clinical implementation of SPARK
Summary
We developed Supportive care Prioritization, Assessment and Recommendations for Kids (SPARK), a web-based application designed to facilitate symptom screening by children receiving cancer treatments and access to supportive care clinical practice guidelines primarily by healthcare providers. Children receiving cancer treatments have excellent survival outcomes, in part, related to the provision of intensive therapies. In order to facilitate systematic symptom screening, a tool appropriate for children with cancer is required [4]. We developed the Symptom Screening in Pediatrics Tool (SSPedi), a 15-item paper or electronic tool that asks children receiving cancer treatments how much each symptom bothered them yesterday or today [5–8]. The electronic version of SSPedi has features designed to facilitate child self-report and children find it easy to use (Fig. 1) [7]. SSPedi has excellent psychometric properties for child self-report and guardian proxy-report administration [8, 9]
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