A pilot project investigating the use of ONCOpatient®—An electronic patient-reported outcomes app for oncology patients

Abstract

Purpose To investigate the feasibility of implementing a remote patient monitoring system using an electronic patient-reported outcomes (ePROs) platform in a tertiary cancer center in the Republic of Ireland. Methods Patients receiving oral chemotherapy and oncology clinicians were invited to participate in the study. Patients were asked to submit weekly symptom questionnaires through an ePRO mobile phone application (app)—ONCOpatient®. Clinical staff were invited to use the ONCOpatient® clinician interface. After 8 weeks all participants submitted evaluation questionnaires. Results Thirteen patients and five staff were enrolled in the study. The majority of patients were female (85%) with a median age of 48 years (range 22–73). Most (92%) were enrolled over telephone requiring on average 16 minutes. Compliance with the weekly assessments was 91%. Alerts were triggered by 40% of patients who then required phone calls to aid with symptom management. At the end of study, 87% of patients reported they would use the app frequently, 75% reported that the platform met their expectations, and 25% that it exceeded their expectations. Similarly, 100% of staff reported they would use the app frequently, 60% reported that it met their expectations, and 40% that it exceeded their expectations. Conclusions Our pilot study showed that it is feasible to implement ePRO platforms in the Irish clinical setting. Small sample bias was recognized as a limitation, and we plan to confirm our findings on a larger cohort of patients. In the next phase we will integrate wearables including remote blood pressure monitoring.