Abstract
This paper analyzes the clinical and technological characteristics of cancer mobile apps that enable patients to securely record, manage, and share their information. It proposes an integrated approach towards developing quality mobile health apps for cancer and discusses issues relevant to the enhancement of patient experience and acceptance, adherence to treatment, and effective support of coordinated care. Regulation, standardization, and interoperability together with the existence of useful, accurate, and reliable tools for active patient engagement are important aids towards efficient cancer disease management. Improving quality of life and well-being, in a secure and safe manner that respects the patients' privacy, seems to be a key challenge, together with the exploitation of the outcomes of recent research projects, relevant to end user digital engagement towards an integrated approach for the introduction of trustworthy, interoperable, usable, adaptable, and quality mobile health apps.
Highlights
Cancer is a generic term used to describe a large group of diseases that can affect any part of the body and is a leading cause of death worldwide
Personal health record (PHR) systems facilitate the collection of information about an individual’s health and health care, stored in an electronic format intended for use by consumers, patients or their informal caregivers
The open use and sharing of Big Data, without compromising patients’ rights to privacy and confidentiality, should be promoted.As cancer has been transformed into a chronic disease, cancer survival means living with a chronic and complex condition
Summary
Cancer is a generic term used to describe a large group of diseases that can affect any part of the body and is a leading cause of death worldwide (https://www.who. int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/cancer). Care and support for patients with cancer should include early recognition of signs and symptoms, support for self-care, personalized care planning, and routine use of patient-reported outcome (PRO) measures (Maher, 2013). Routine reporting of patient outcomes greatly facilitates the identification of present problems and impact of treatment. Personal health record (PHR) systems facilitate the collection of information about an individual’s health and health care, stored in an electronic format intended for use by consumers, patients or their informal caregivers. It has the potential to support patients in managing their chronic illness. As a tool, it facilitates information exchange between patients and healthcare professionals as well as between healthcare professionals and/ or institutions across health care sectors. PHR adoption and use in the context of cancer is not yet widespread (Wiljer et al, 2010), when it is implemented, PHR use is frequent and increasing (Roehrs et al, 2017)
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