Person-Centered App Helps Women with Breast Cancer

The face-to-face meetings between the patient and the care provider might be successfully complemented with person-centered e-support. A preliminary evaluation of breast cancer patients shows that a newly developed app can assist women undergoing treatment for breast cancer in handling symptoms and side effects and provide support.

A thesis at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, has developed and preliminarily evaluated an interactive app for person-centered e-support that facilitates self-care. The app, called Care Expert, has been developed expressly for women undergoing treatment for breast cancer and contains functions for self-assessment of health and quality of life, self-monitoring, self-validation and direct reporting to the person's contact nurse.

Scientifically based advice
The new app gives the patients support during cancer treatment, enabling them to identify any symptoms and treatment side effects that may occur and provide them with scientifically based advice for self-care customized to the person specific needs. The patient is also given the possibility to contact the healthcare team via the app by writing a personal message. Such continuous support is especially significant along with early-stage breast cancer treatment that essentially occurs in outpatient cancer care settings.

Feeling of support
The evaluation shows that the women experienced an increased feeling of support and increased continuous access to the healthcare team while using the app.

"A major advantage with the prototype is that it integrates the patient's and the healthcare team's perspectives, which is a key to the success of e-support applications," Says PhD student Filipa Ventura at Sahlgrenska Academy.

Focus on the person
One of the of the individual studies in the thesis where 226 women treated for breast cancer participated, shows that information on the diagnosis and treatment offered via computer based programs is insufficient to support the women's ability to handle their personal situation during cancer treatment, or to increase participation in their care.

Currently, there are a number of apps that have been developed to support cancer patients during treatment. Care Expert is the first that is designed following the principles of person-centered care, which places the focus on the person rather than the person's diagnosis.

Need for support
"If e-support should meet the patients' needs, then they need be involved from the very beginning, otherwise there is a significant risk that the application will not be used or will increase the patient's burden instead of being supportive," says Filipa Ventura.

The thesis concludes that women undergoing breast cancer treatment need support, even if they are highly resourceful individuals. The provision of adequate support will assist women to handle the disease and treatment consequences, while strengthening their own motivation to actively participate in their care and treatment.

The thesis Person-centred e-support: foundations for the development nursing interventions in outpatient cancer care was defended on February 11.

Link to the thesis: http://hdl.handle.net/2077/39524

Most Popular Now

New Training Year Starts at Siemens Heal…

In September, 197 school graduates will start their vocational training or dual studies in Germany at Siemens Healthineers. 117 apprentices and 80 dual students will begin their careers at Siemens...

New AI Tool Addresses Accuracy and Fairn…

A team of researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has developed a new method to identify and reduce biases in datasets used to train machine-learning algorithms...

Digital ECGs at Barts Health: A High-Imp…

Opinion Article by Dr Krishnaraj Sinhji Rathod, consultant in interventional cardiology, Barts Health NHS Trust. Picture the moment. A patient in an ambulance, enroute to hospital with new chest pain. Paramedics...

Study Sheds Light on Hurdles Faced in Tr…

Implementing artificial intelligence (AI) into NHS hospitals is far harder than initially anticipated, with complications around governance, contracts, data collection, harmonisation with old IT systems, finding the right AI tools...

Using Deep Learning for Precision Cancer…

Altuna Akalin and his team at the Max Delbrück Center have developed a new tool to more precisely guide cancer treatment. Described in a paper published in Nature Communications, the...

New AI Approach Paves Way for Smarter T-…

Researchers have harnessed the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to tackle one of the most complex challenges in immunology: predicting how T cells recognize and respond to specific peptide antigens...

Study Used AI Models to Improve Predicti…

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a complex condition marked by a gradual decline in kidney function, which can ultimately progress to end-stage renal disease (ESRD). Globally, the prevalence of the...

AI-Powered CRISPR could Lead to Faster G…

Stanford Medicine researchers have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) tool to help scientists better plan gene-editing experiments. The technology, CRISPR-GPT, acts as a gene-editing “copilot” supported by AI to help...

Groundbreaking AI Aims to Speed Lifesavi…

To solve a problem, we have to see it clearly. Whether it’s an infection by a novel virus or memory-stealing plaques forming in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, visualizing disease processes...

AI Spots Hidden Signs of Depression in S…

Depression is one of the most common mental health challenges, but its early signs are often overlooked. It is often linked to reduced facial expressivity. However, whether mild depression or...