12P - Daily collection of physical activity via smartphone application and smart band for development of distress screening tools in breast cancer survivors: A feasibility study

Background

Mobile health apps are increasingly gaining attention as opportunities to obtain patient-generated health data without asking for self-report or visiting hospital. Since there are few studies regarding the mobile-based activity trackers in breast cancer patients, we decided to evaluate the feasibility of a mobile walking app and a smart band as a tool for collecting physical activity of breast cancer patients.

Methods

Between June 2017 and March 2018, patients who received surgery for breast cancer at Asan Medical Center were enrolled and asked to access two mobile apps on a weekly basis during a six-month period to automatically record their daily physical activity. Compliance rates of the daily collection via a smartphone walking app and a wearable smart band were compared in a within-subject manner. Longitudinal daily collection rates were calculated to examine a drop-out pattern. Finally, we examined factors associated with the compliance of daily collections using multivariate linear regression analysis.

Results

A total of 160 participants were analyzed, and they are asked to follow an instruction to access the apps at least once a week via their smartphones. Despite the fact that both smartphone app and the smart band showed more than 50% of compliance rate during the six-month follow-up period, smartphone walking app demonstrated higher overall compliance rate (88%) than a smart band (52%). The median value of individual compliance rate is 91% for the walking app and 55% for a smart band. Women having other diseases, an anti-hormonal therapy or a targeted therapy show a higher compliance rate to smartphone walking app, and young women show a higher rate to the app than older women. However, there was no association between any of the patient characteristics and a compliance rate to the smart band.

Conclusions

Smartphone apps or smart bands are feasible tools to collect daily physical activity data for in breast cancer survivors.

Clinical trial identification

Editorial acknowledgement

Legal entity responsible for the study

Yungil Shin.

Funding

Has not received any funding.

Disclosure

All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.