MyPatientPal: An App to Help Patients Manage Their Cancer Care

MyPatientPal was developed in collaboration with both patient and oncologist stakeholders, is designed to facilitate such patient self-management through the daily reporting of side effects and medications.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Cancer
• Intervention / Treatment: Other: MyPatientPal smartphone app

Detailed Description

MyPatientPal is a patient app that is designed to help patients track and manage treatment side effects and medication adherence on a daily basis. Side effects (e.g., pain, fatigue, diarrhea, nausea) can be physically and emotionally debilitating, and when uncontrolled, can cause treatment complications, resulting in unscheduled care costs, patient out-of-pocket costs, and delays or discontinuation of treatment. The app allows personalization of daily entries such that patients can select the specific medications and dosage and side effects (using items from the NCI Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events) that they and/or their providers want to track. A charting feature provides an easy-to-read display of patients' daily reports, summarizing the intensity and frequency of side effects and medication use either by week or by month. These reports can also be printed out and shared with providers.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 40
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • Michigan
    • Detroit, Michigan, United States, 48201
      • Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 18 years to 75 years (Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Have a diagnosis of any solid tumor cancer
• Be starting treatment using an oral cancer therapeutic agent
• Be able to speak, read, and write English
• Willing and able to use their smartphone to use MyPatientPal

Exclusion Criteria:

• Patients with cognitive or perceptual disturbances

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Other
• Allocation: N/A
• Interventional Model: Single Group Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

1

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Other: Single-Arm Smartphone App Use; All patients in this single-arm study will use a smartphone-based app, MyPatientPal, to enter symptoms and track medications related to their cancer treatment. No drugs will be administered for the purposes of this behavioral study.	Other: MyPatientPal smartphone app; All patients in this single-arm study will use a smartphone-based app, MyPatientPal, to enter symptoms and track medications related to their cancer treatment. No drugs will be administered for the purposes of this behavioral study.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Treatment-related symptoms	The frequency of treatment-related symptoms will be examined as the primary outcome. Patients will report the frequency and severity of symptoms selected from a symptom survey that consists of a list of 17 symptoms derived from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) CTCAE (Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events). Examples include diarrhea, constipation, vomiting, fever, and fatigue. Patients will be asked to mark the frequency of each symptom using a 5-point rating scale (from 0=none to 4=very severe). A total symptom impact score will be calculated by summing item responses across all symptoms. The investigators will compare the overall mean difference between the weekly and daily reporting phases.	Symptoms will be reported weekly via the internet for weeks 1-4 and daily for weeks 5-8 via the smartphone app

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Adherence to medications	Patient adherence to oral chemotherapy will be examined as a secondary outcome. Patients will report any medications they are taking related to their treatment. Each report will consist of them answering a forced-choice question about whether each of their self-selected medications was taken (0=yes, 1=no). The investigators will compare the ratio of total days of adherence/total number of days per medication between the weekly and daily reporting phases. There will be no set number of medications that will be assessed given that patients will self-select their own medications, but on average, patients will report on 3 medications. Examples may include Xeloda, Ibrance, Femara, Tamoxifen, Remeron, Reglan, or Compazine.	Adherence will be reported weekly via the internet for weeks 1-4 and daily for weeks 5-8 via the smartphone app
Patient self-efficacy	Patient self-efficacy will be examined as a secondary outcome. Patient self-efficacy for managing treatment side effects will be assessed with a 13-item version of the Chronic Pain Self-Efficacy Scale, which has been modified for a cancer population. Items assess patients' self-efficacy for managing and coping with side effects. Examples are "How certain is the participant that they can control their fatigue?" and "How certain is the participant that they can cope with mild to moderate pain?" Items are rated on a 10-point Likert scale ranging from 10 = very uncertain and 100 = very certain and items scores are summed for a total score.	Patient self-efficacy will be reported weekly via the internet for weeks 1-4 and daily for weeks 5-8 via the smartphone app

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Felicity Harper
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Felicity Harper, PhD, Associate Professor/PI

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): October 1, 2018
• Primary Completion (Actual): October 8, 2019
• Study Completion (Actual): October 11, 2019

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: September 22, 2018
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: September 22, 2018
• First Posted (Actual): September 25, 2018

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): March 2, 2021
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: March 1, 2021
• Last Verified: March 1, 2021

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Other Study ID Numbers: 2018-063

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: No

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No