Evaluation of an interactive electronic patient reported outcome (e-PRO) system in outpatient with oral chemotherapy

Background

Health Information Technology (HIT) is increasingly integrated in clinical cancer care. Simultaneously routine assessment of patient reported outcomes (PROs) has been shown to reliably improve symptom management, identification of psychosocial problems and patient-provider communication.

Methods

This study is a single center experience of a multicenter randomized study for the development and validation of an interactive e-PRO tool (RemeCoach). After obtaining informed consent, outpatients, using oral anti-cancer treatment, recorded their medication intake and 17 clinical parameters using this E-PRO tool. The device allowed real time data collection and communication with other care providers via a central platform. The registered data were processed by an algorithm, this algorithm stratifies the data into different grades according to international standards of care (CTCAE v4.0) and clinical importance. Patient clinical and demographic information is collected from medical records and analyzed using descriptive statistics.

Results

37 Patients were included, 59% male, mean age 59,2 (range 38-79). 35% Of patients used capecitabine, 43% regorafenib, 5% pazopanib, 5% everolimus and 5% sunitinib. Most common symptoms cited were fatigue, cutaneous toxicity, myalgia and joint pain and cough. Out of 19 patients that stopped therapy, one (5%) dropped out of the study, 1 switched therapy due to progressive disease, 8 (42%) patients died, 9 (48%) terminated prescribed treatment. The RemeCoach was well adopted: > 75% patients registered > 75% of clinical outcomes.

Conclusions

This study confirms the feasibility of the program, in an outpatient setting. This e-tool provides a means to register compliance, early symptoms of disease and toxicity of treatment.The compliance to the e-PRO tool will be confirmed, with further development of this program in a multicenter, randomized design. Evaluation of quality of life PRO-measurements and further exploration of the relationship between optimal pharmacovigilance and improvement of patient's outcome will ensue.

Clinical trial identification

Legal entity responsible for the study

University Hospital Antwerp

Funding

University Hospital Antwerp

Disclosure

All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.