Petrocchi Serena, Filipponi Chiara, Montagna Giacomo, Bonollo Marta, Pagani Olivia, Meani Francesco
Institute of Communication and Health, Università della Svizzera Italiana, Lugano, Switzerland.
Applied Research Division for Cognitive and Psychological Science, European Institute of Oncology IRCCS, Milan, Italy.
JMIR Form Res. 2021 May 10;5(5):e28668. doi: 10.2196/28668.
Several mobile apps have been designed for patients with a diagnosis of cancer. Unfortunately, despite the promising potential and impressive spread, their effectiveness often remains unclear. Most mobile apps are developed without any medical professional involvement and quality evidence-based assessment. Furthermore, they are often implemented in clinical care before any research is performed to confirm usability, appreciation, and clinical benefits for patients.
We aimed to develop a new smartphone app (Centro di Senologia della Svizzera Italiana [CSSI]) specifically designed by breast care specialists and patients together to help breast cancer patients better understand and organize their journey through the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. We describe the development of the app and present assessments to evaluate its feasibility, usefulness, and capability to improve patient empowerment.
A mixed method study with brief longitudinal quantitative data collection and subsequent qualitative semistructured interviews was designed. Twenty breast cancer patients participated in the study (mean age 51 years, SD 10 years). The usability of the app, the user experience, and empowerment were measured after 1 month. The semistructured interviews measured the utility of the app and the necessary improvements.
The app received good responses from the patients in terms of positive perception of the purpose of the app (7/20, 35%), organizing the cure path and being aware of the steps in cancer management (5/20, 25%), facilitating doctor-patient communication (4/20, 20%), and having detailed information about the resources offered by the hospital (2/20, 10%). Correlation and regression analyses showed that user experience increased the level of empowerment of patients (B=0.31, 95% CI 0.22-0.69; P=.009). The interviews suggested the need to constantly keep the app updated and to synchronize it with the hospital's electronic agenda, and carefully selecting the best time to offer the tool to final users was considered crucial.
Despite the very small number of participants in this study, the findings demonstrate the potential of the app and support a fully powered trial to evaluate the empowering effect of the mobile health app. More data will be gathered with an improved version of the app in the second phase involving a larger study sample.
已经为癌症患者设计了几款移动应用程序。不幸的是，尽管其潜力巨大且传播广泛，但其有效性往往仍不明确。大多数移动应用程序的开发没有任何医学专业人员的参与，也没有基于质量证据的评估。此外，它们通常在进行任何研究以确认其对患者的可用性、受欢迎程度和临床益处之前就已应用于临床护理。
我们旨在开发一款新的智能手机应用程序（意大利瑞士乳房中心[CSSI]），该应用程序由乳房护理专家和患者共同专门设计，以帮助乳腺癌患者更好地理解并规划其癌症诊断和治疗过程。我们描述了该应用程序的开发过程，并进行评估以评估其可行性、实用性以及增强患者权能的能力。
设计了一项混合方法研究，包括简短的纵向定量数据收集以及随后的定性半结构化访谈。20名乳腺癌患者参与了该研究（平均年龄51岁，标准差10岁）。1个月后测量了该应用程序的可用性、用户体验和权能增强情况。半结构化访谈测量了该应用程序的实用性和必要的改进之处。
患者对该应用程序的目的有积极看法（7/20，35%）、能够规划治疗路径并了解癌症管理步骤（5/20，25%）、便于医患沟通（4/20，20%）以及能获取医院提供资源的详细信息（2/20，10%），该应用程序得到了患者的良好反馈。相关性和回归分析表明，用户体验提高了患者的权能水平（B = 0.31，95%置信区间0.22 - 0.69；P = 0.009）。访谈表明需要不断更新该应用程序并使其与医院的电子日程同步，并且认为仔细选择向最终用户提供该工具的最佳时间至关重要。
尽管本研究的参与者数量很少，但研究结果证明了该应用程序的潜力，并支持进行一项全面的试验以评估移动健康应用程序的增强权能效果。在第二阶段，将通过改进版应用程序收集更多数据，涉及更大的研究样本。
