JMIR CancerPub Date : 2025-01-30DOI: 10.2196/58938
Itske Fraterman, Lucia Sacchi, Henk Mallo, Valentina Tibollo, Savannah Lucia Catherina Glaser, Stephanie Medlock, Ronald Cornet, Matteo Gabetta, Vitali Hisko, Vadzim Khadakou, Ella Barkan, Laura Del Campo, David Glasspool, Alexandra Kogan, Giordano Lanzola, Roy Leizer, Manuel Ottaviano, Mor Peleg, Konrad Śniatała, Aneta Lisowska, Szymon Wilk, Enea Parimbelli, Silvana Quaglini, Mimma Rizzo, Laura Deborah Locati, Annelies Boekhout, Lonneke V van de Poll-Franse, Sofie Wilgenhof
{"title":"Exploring the Impact of the Multimodal CAPABLE eHealth Intervention on Health-Related Quality of Life in Patients With Melanoma Undergoing Immune-Checkpoint Inhibition: Prospective Pilot Study.","authors":"Itske Fraterman, Lucia Sacchi, Henk Mallo, Valentina Tibollo, Savannah Lucia Catherina Glaser, Stephanie Medlock, Ronald Cornet, Matteo Gabetta, Vitali Hisko, Vadzim Khadakou, Ella Barkan, Laura Del Campo, David Glasspool, Alexandra Kogan, Giordano Lanzola, Roy Leizer, Manuel Ottaviano, Mor Peleg, Konrad Śniatała, Aneta Lisowska, Szymon Wilk, Enea Parimbelli, Silvana Quaglini, Mimma Rizzo, Laura Deborah Locati, Annelies Boekhout, Lonneke V van de Poll-Franse, Sofie Wilgenhof","doi":"10.2196/58938","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2196/58938","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Patients with melanoma receiving immunotherapy with immune-checkpoint inhibitors often experience immune-related adverse events, cancer-related fatigue, and emotional distress, affecting health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and clinical outcome to immunotherapy. eHealth tools can aid patients with cancer in addressing issues, such as adverse events and psychosocial well-being, from various perspectives.</p><p><strong>Objective: </strong>This study aimed to explore the effect of the Cancer Patients Better Life Experience (CAPABLE) system, accessed through a mobile app, on HRQoL compared with a matched historical control group receiving standard care. CAPABLE is an extensively tested eHealth app, including educational material, remote symptom monitoring, and well-being interventions.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>This prospective pilot study compared an exploratory cohort that received the CAPABLE smartphone app and a multisensory smartwatch for 6 months (intervention) to a 2:1 individually matched historical prospective control group. HRQoL data were measured with the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire-Core 30 at baseline (T0), 3 months (T1), and 6 months (T2) after start of treatment. Mixed effects linear regression models were used to compare HRQoL between the 2 groups over time.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>From the 59 eligible patients for the CAPABLE intervention, 31 (53%) signed informed consent to participate. Baseline HRQoL was on average 10 points higher in the intervention group compared with controls, although equally matched on baseline and clinical characteristics. When correcting for sex, age, disease stage, and baseline scores, an adjusted difference in fatigue of -5.09 (95% CI -15.20 to 5.02, P=.32) at month 3 was found. No significant nor clinically relevant adjusted differences on other HRQoL domains over time were found. However, information satisfaction was significantly higher in the CAPABLE group (β=8.71, 95% CI 1.54-15.88, P=.02).</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>The intervention showed a limited effect on HRQoL, although there was a small improvement in fatigue at 3 months, as well as information satisfaction. When aiming at personalized patient and survivorship care, further optimization and prospective investigation of eHealth tools is warranted.</p>","PeriodicalId":45538,"journal":{"name":"JMIR Cancer","volume":"11 ","pages":"e58938"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143068638","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Spatiotemporal Correlation Analysis for the Incidence of Esophageal and Gastric Cancer From 2010 to 2019: Ecological Study.","authors":"Zixuan Cui, Chen Suo, Yidan Zhao, Shuo Wang, Ming Zhao, Ruilin Chen, Linyao Lu, Tiejun Zhang, Xingdong Chen","doi":"10.2196/66655","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2196/66655","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Esophageal and gastric cancer were among the top 10 most common cancers worldwide. In addition, sex-specific differences were observed in the incidence. Due to their anatomic proximity, the 2 cancers have both different but also shared risk factors and epidemiological features. Exploring the potential correlated incidence pattern of them, holds significant importance in providing clues in the etiology and preventive strategies.</p><p><strong>Objective: </strong>This study aims to explore the spatiotemporal correlation between the incidence patterns of esophageal and gastric cancer in 204 countries and territories from 2010 to 2019 so that prevention and control strategies can be more effective.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>The data of esophageal and gastric cancer were sourced from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD). Spatial autocorrelation analysis using Moran I in ArcGIS 10.8 (Esri) was performed to determine spatial clustering of each cancer incidence. We classified different risk areas based on the risk ratio (RR) of the 2 cancers in various countries to the global, and the correlation between their RR was evaluated using Pearson correlation coefficient. Temporal trends were quantified by calculating the average annual percent change (AAPC), and the correlation between the temporal trends of both cancers was evaluated using Pearson correlation coefficients.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>In 2019, among 204 countries and territories, the age-standardized incidence rates (ASIR) of esophageal cancer ranged from 0.91 (95% CI 0.65-1.58) to 24.53 (95% CI 18.74-32.51), and the ASIR of gastric cancer ranged from 3.28 (95% CI 2.67-3.91) to 43.70 (95% CI 34.29-55.10). Malawi was identified as the highest risk for esophageal cancer (male RR=3.27; female RR=5.19) and low risk for gastric cancer (male RR=0.21; female RR=0.23) in both sexes. Spatial autocorrelation analysis revealed significant spatial clustering of the incidence for both cancers (Moran I>0.20 and P<.001). A positive correlation between the risk of esophageal and gastric cancer was observed in males (r=0.25, P<.001). The ASIR of both cancers showed a decreasing trend globally. The ASIR for esophageal and gastric cancer showed an AAPC of -1.43 (95% CI -1.58 to -1.27) and -1.76 (95% CI -2.08 to -1.43) in males, and -1.93 (95% CI -2.11 to -1.75) and -1.79 (95% CI -2.13 to -1.46) in females. In addition, a positive correlation between the temporal trends in ASIR for both cancers was observed at the global level across sexes (male r=0.98; female r=0.98).</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Our study shows that there was a significant spatial clustering of the incidence for esophageal and gastric cancer and a positive correlation between the risk of both cancers across countries was observed in males. In addition, a codescending incidence trend between both cancers was observed at the global level.</p>","PeriodicalId":45538,"journal":{"name":"JMIR Cancer","volume":"11 ","pages":"e66655"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143068599","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
JMIR CancerPub Date : 2025-01-28DOI: 10.2196/52886
Daphna Y Spiegel, Isabel D Friesner, William Zhang, Travis Zack, Gianna Yan, Julia Willcox, Nicolas Prionas, Lisa Singer, Catherine Park, Julian C Hong
{"title":"Exploring the Social Media Discussion of Breast Cancer Treatment Choices: Quantitative Natural Language Processing Study.","authors":"Daphna Y Spiegel, Isabel D Friesner, William Zhang, Travis Zack, Gianna Yan, Julia Willcox, Nicolas Prionas, Lisa Singer, Catherine Park, Julian C Hong","doi":"10.2196/52886","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2196/52886","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Early-stage breast cancer has the complex challenge of carrying a favorable prognosis with multiple treatment options, including breast-conserving surgery (BCS) or mastectomy. Social media is increasingly used as a source of information and as a decision tool for patients, and awareness of these conversations is important for patient counseling.</p><p><strong>Objective: </strong>The goal of this study was to compare sentiments and associated emotions in social media discussions surrounding BCS and mastectomy using natural language processing (NLP).</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Reddit posts and comments from the Reddit subreddit r/breastcancer and associated metadata were collected using pushshift.io. Overall, 105,231 paragraphs across 59,416 posts and comments from 2011 to 2021 were collected and analyzed. Paragraphs were processed through the Apache Clinical Text Analysis Knowledge Extraction System and identified as discussing BCS or mastectomy based on physician-defined Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT) concepts. Paragraphs were analyzed with a VADER (Valence Aware Dictionary for Sentiment Reasoning) compound sentiment score (ranging from -1 to 1, corresponding to negativity or positivity) and GoEmotions scores (0-1) corresponding to the intensity of 27 different emotions and neutrality.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Of the 105,231 paragraphs, there were 7306 (6.94% of those analyzed) paragraphs mentioning BCS and mastectomy (2729 and 5476, respectively). Discussion of both increased over time, with BCS outpacing mastectomy. The median sentiment score for all discussions analyzed in aggregate became more positive over time. In specific analyses by topic, positive sentiments for discussions with mastectomy mentions increased over time; however, discussions with BCS-specific mentions did not show a similar trend and remained overall neutral. Compared to BCS, conversations about mastectomy tended to have more positive sentiments. The most commonly identified emotions included neutrality, gratitude, caring, approval, and optimism. Anger, annoyance, disappointment, disgust, and joy increased for BCS over time.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Patients are increasingly participating in breast cancer therapy discussions with a web-based community. While discussions surrounding mastectomy became increasingly positive, BCS discussions did not show the same trend. This mirrors national clinical trends in the United States, with the increasing use of mastectomy over BCS in early-stage breast cancer. Recognizing sentiments and emotions surrounding the decision-making process can facilitate patient-centric and emotionally sensitive treatment recommendations.</p>","PeriodicalId":45538,"journal":{"name":"JMIR Cancer","volume":"11 ","pages":"e52886"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143068596","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
JMIR CancerPub Date : 2025-01-28DOI: 10.2196/60653
Owain Tudor Jones, Natalia Calanzani, Suzanne E Scott, Rubeta N Matin, Jon Emery, Fiona M Walter
{"title":"User and Developer Views on Using AI Technologies to Facilitate the Early Detection of Skin Cancers in Primary Care Settings: Qualitative Semistructured Interview Study.","authors":"Owain Tudor Jones, Natalia Calanzani, Suzanne E Scott, Rubeta N Matin, Jon Emery, Fiona M Walter","doi":"10.2196/60653","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2196/60653","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Skin cancers, including melanoma and keratinocyte cancers, are among the most common cancers worldwide, and their incidence is rising in most populations. Earlier detection of skin cancer leads to better outcomes for patients. Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have been applied to skin cancer diagnosis, but many technologies lack clinical evidence and/or the appropriate regulatory approvals. There are few qualitative studies examining the views of relevant stakeholders or evidence about the implementation and positioning of AI technologies in the skin cancer diagnostic pathway.</p><p><strong>Objective: </strong>This study aimed to understand the views of several stakeholder groups on the use of AI technologies to facilitate the early diagnosis of skin cancer, including patients, members of the public, general practitioners, primary care nurse practitioners, dermatologists, and AI researchers.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>This was a qualitative, semistructured interview study with 29 stakeholders. Participants were purposively sampled based on age, sex, and geographical location. We conducted the interviews via Zoom between September 2022 and May 2023. Transcribed recordings were analyzed using thematic framework analysis. The framework for the Nonadoption, Abandonment, and Challenges to Scale-Up, Spread, and Sustainability was used to guide the analysis to help understand the complexity of implementing diagnostic technologies in clinical settings.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Major themes were \"the position of AI in the skin cancer diagnostic pathway\" and \"the aim of the AI technology\"; cross-cutting themes included trust, usability and acceptability, generalizability, evaluation and regulation, implementation, and long-term use. There was no clear consensus on where AI should be placed along the skin cancer diagnostic pathway, but most participants saw the technology in the hands of either patients or primary care practitioners. Participants were concerned about the quality of the data used to develop and test AI technologies and the impact this could have on their accuracy in clinical use with patients from a range of demographics and the risk of missing skin cancers. Ease of use and not increasing the workload of already strained health care services were important considerations for participants. Health care professionals and AI researchers reported a lack of established methods of evaluating and regulating AI technologies.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>This study is one of the first to examine the views of a wide range of stakeholders on the use of AI technologies to facilitate early diagnosis of skin cancer. The optimal approach and position in the diagnostic pathway for these technologies have not yet been determined. AI technologies need to be developed and implemented carefully and thoughtfully, with attention paid to the quality and representativeness of the data used for development, ","PeriodicalId":45538,"journal":{"name":"JMIR Cancer","volume":"11 ","pages":"e60653"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143060978","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
JMIR CancerPub Date : 2025-01-27DOI: 10.2196/58834
Kelly Voigt, Yingtao Sun, Ayush Patandin, Johanna Hendriks, Richard Hendrik Goossens, Cornelis Verhoef, Olga Husson, Dirk Grünhagen, Jiwon Jung
{"title":"A Machine Learning Approach Using Topic Modeling to Identify and Assess Experiences of Patients With Colorectal Cancer: Explorative Study.","authors":"Kelly Voigt, Yingtao Sun, Ayush Patandin, Johanna Hendriks, Richard Hendrik Goossens, Cornelis Verhoef, Olga Husson, Dirk Grünhagen, Jiwon Jung","doi":"10.2196/58834","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2196/58834","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>The rising number of cancer survivors and the shortage of health care professionals challenge the accessibility of cancer care. Health technologies are necessary for sustaining optimal patient journeys. To understand individuals' daily lives during their patient journey, qualitative studies are crucial. However, not all patients wish to share their stories with researchers.</p><p><strong>Objective: </strong>This study aims to identify and assess patient experiences on a large scale using a novel machine learning-supported approach, leveraging data from patient forums.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Forum posts of patients with colorectal cancer (CRC) from the Cancer Survivors Network USA were used as the data source. Topic modeling, as a part of machine learning, was used to recognize the topic patterns in the posts. Researchers read the most relevant 50 posts on each topic, dividing them into \"home\" or \"hospital\" contexts. A patient community journey map, derived from patients stories, was developed to visually illustrate our findings. CRC medical doctors and a quality-of-life expert evaluated the identified topics of patient experience and the map.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Based on 212,107 posts, 37 topics and 10 upper clusters were produced. Dominant clusters included \"Daily activities while living with CRC\" (38,782, 18.3%) and \"Understanding treatment including alternatives and adjuvant therapy\" (31,577, 14.9%). Topics related to the home context had more emotional content compared with the hospital context. The patient community journey map was constructed based on these findings.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Our study highlighted the diverse concerns and experiences of patients with CRC. The more emotional content in home context discussions underscores the personal impact of CRC beyond clinical settings. Based on our study, we found that a machine learning-supported approach is a promising solution to analyze patients' experiences. The innovative application of patient community journey mapping provides a unique perspective into the challenges in patients' daily lives, which is essential for delivering appropriate support at the right moment.</p>","PeriodicalId":45538,"journal":{"name":"JMIR Cancer","volume":"11 ","pages":"e58834"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143060940","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
JMIR CancerPub Date : 2025-01-23DOI: 10.2196/57275
Yosuke Yamagishi, Yuta Nakamura, Shouhei Hanaoka, Osamu Abe
{"title":"Large Language Model Approach for Zero-Shot Information Extraction and Clustering of Japanese Radiology Reports: Algorithm Development and Validation.","authors":"Yosuke Yamagishi, Yuta Nakamura, Shouhei Hanaoka, Osamu Abe","doi":"10.2196/57275","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2196/57275","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>The application of natural language processing in medicine has increased significantly, including tasks such as information extraction and classification. Natural language processing plays a crucial role in structuring free-form radiology reports, facilitating the interpretation of textual content, and enhancing data utility through clustering techniques. Clustering allows for the identification of similar lesions and disease patterns across a broad dataset, making it useful for aggregating information and discovering new insights in medical imaging. However, most publicly available medical datasets are in English, with limited resources in other languages. This scarcity poses a challenge for development of models geared toward non-English downstream tasks.</p><p><strong>Objective: </strong>This study aimed to develop and evaluate an algorithm that uses large language models (LLMs) to extract information from Japanese lung cancer radiology reports and perform clustering analysis. The effectiveness of this approach was assessed and compared with previous supervised methods.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>This study employed the MedTxt-RR dataset, comprising 135 Japanese radiology reports from 9 radiologists who interpreted the computed tomography images of 15 lung cancer patients obtained from Radiopaedia. Previously used in the NTCIR-16 (NII Testbeds and Community for Information Access Research) shared task for clustering performance competition, this dataset was ideal for comparing the clustering ability of our algorithm with those of previous methods. The dataset was split into 8 cases for development and 7 for testing, respectively. The study's approach involved using the LLM to extract information pertinent to lung cancer findings and transforming it into numeric features for clustering, using the K-means method. Performance was evaluated using 135 reports for information extraction accuracy and 63 test reports for clustering performance. This study focused on the accuracy of automated systems for extracting tumor size, location, and laterality from clinical reports. The clustering performance was evaluated using normalized mutual information, adjusted mutual information , and the Fowlkes-Mallows index for both the development and test data.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>The tumor size was accurately identified in 99 out of 135 reports (73.3%), with errors in 36 reports (26.7%), primarily due to missing or incorrect size information. Tumor location and laterality were identified with greater accuracy in 112 out of 135 reports (83%); however, 23 reports (17%) contained errors mainly due to empty values or incorrect data. Clustering performance of the test data yielded an normalized mutual information of 0.6414, adjusted mutual information of 0.5598, and Fowlkes-Mallows index of 0.5354. The proposed method demonstrated superior performance across all evaluation metrics compared to previous methods.</p><p><str","PeriodicalId":45538,"journal":{"name":"JMIR Cancer","volume":"11 ","pages":"e57275"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143048228","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
JMIR CancerPub Date : 2025-01-22DOI: 10.2196/56625
Cinzia Brunelli, Sara Alfieri, Emanuela Zito, Marco Spelta, Laura Arba, Linda Lombi, Luana Caselli, Augusto Caraceni, Claudia Borreani, Anna Roli, Rosalba Miceli, Gabriele Tine', Ernesto Zecca, Marco Platania, Giuseppe Procopio, Nicola Nicolai, Luigi Battaglia, Laura Lozza, Morena Shkodra, Giacomo Massa, Daniele Loiacono, Giovanni Apolone
{"title":"Patient Voices: Multimethod Study on the Feasibility of Implementing Electronic Patient-Reported Outcome Measures in a Comprehensive Cancer Center.","authors":"Cinzia Brunelli, Sara Alfieri, Emanuela Zito, Marco Spelta, Laura Arba, Linda Lombi, Luana Caselli, Augusto Caraceni, Claudia Borreani, Anna Roli, Rosalba Miceli, Gabriele Tine', Ernesto Zecca, Marco Platania, Giuseppe Procopio, Nicola Nicolai, Luigi Battaglia, Laura Lozza, Morena Shkodra, Giacomo Massa, Daniele Loiacono, Giovanni Apolone","doi":"10.2196/56625","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2196/56625","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>\"Patient Voices\" is a software developed to promote the systematic collection of electronic patient-reported outcome measures (ePROMs) in routine oncology clinical practice.</p><p><strong>Objective: </strong>This study aimed to assess compliance with and feasibility of the Patient Voices ePROM system and analyze patient-related barriers in an Italian comprehensive cancer center.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Consecutive patients with cancer attending 3 outpatient clinics and 3 inpatient wards were screened for eligibility (adults, native speakers, and being able to fill in the ePROMs) and enrolled in a quantitative and qualitative multimethod study. Compliance, reasons for not administering the ePROMs, patients' interaction needs, and patient-perceived System Usability Scale (range 0-100) were collected; semistructured interviews were carried out in a subsample of patients.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>From June 2020 to September 2021, a total of 435 patients were screened, 421 (96.7%) were eligible, and 309 completed the ePROMs (309/421, 73.4%; 95% CI 69.8%-77.5%; mean age 63.3, SD 13.7 years). Organization problems and patient refusal were the main reasons for not administering the ePROMs (outpatients: 40/234, 17.1% and inpatients: 44/201, 21.9%). Help for tablet use was needed by 27.8% (47/169) of outpatients and 10.7% (15/140) of inpatients, while the support received for item interpretation was similar in the 2 groups (outpatients: 36/169, 21.3% and inpatients: 26/140, 18.6%). Average System Usability Scale scores indicated high usability in both groups (outpatients: mean 86.8, SD 15.8 and inpatients: mean 83.9, SD 18.8). Overall, repeated measurement compliance was 76.9% (173/225; outpatients only). Interviewed patients showed positive attitudes toward ePROMs. However, there are barriers to implementation related to the time and cognitive effort required to complete the questionnaires. There is also skepticism about the usefulness of ePROMs in interactions with health care professionals.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>This study provides useful information for future ePROM implementation strategies, aimed at effectively supporting the routine clinical management and care of patients with cancer. In addition, these findings may be relevant to other organizations willing to systematically collect PROMs or ePROMs in their clinical routines.</p><p><strong>Trial registration: </strong>ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03968718; https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT03968718.</p>","PeriodicalId":45538,"journal":{"name":"JMIR Cancer","volume":"11 ","pages":"e56625"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143025140","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
JMIR CancerPub Date : 2025-01-20DOI: 10.2196/58093
Yoshihide Inayama, Ken Yamaguchi, Kayoko Mizuno, Sachiko Tanaka-Mizuno, Ayami Koike, Nozomi Higashiyama, Mana Taki, Koji Yamanoi, Ryusuke Murakami, Junzo Hamanishi, Satomi Yoshida, Masaki Mandai, Koji Kawakami
{"title":"Changes in Physical Activity Across Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment Based on Smartphone Step Count Data Linked to a Japanese Claims Database: Retrospective Cohort Study.","authors":"Yoshihide Inayama, Ken Yamaguchi, Kayoko Mizuno, Sachiko Tanaka-Mizuno, Ayami Koike, Nozomi Higashiyama, Mana Taki, Koji Yamanoi, Ryusuke Murakami, Junzo Hamanishi, Satomi Yoshida, Masaki Mandai, Koji Kawakami","doi":"10.2196/58093","DOIUrl":"10.2196/58093","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Although physical activity (PA) is recommended for patients with cancer, changes in PA across cancer diagnosis and treatment have not been objectively evaluated.</p><p><strong>Objective: </strong>This study aimed to assess the impact of cancer diagnosis and treatment on PA levels.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>This was a retrospective cohort study using a Japanese claims database provided by DeSC Healthcare Inc, in which daily step count data, derived from smartphone pedometers, are linked to the claims data. In this study, we included patients newly diagnosed with cancer, along with those newly diagnosed with diabetes mellitus for reference. We collected data between April 2014 and September 2021 and analyzed them. The observation period spanned from 6 months before diagnosis to 12 months after diagnosis. We applied a generalized additive mixed model with a cubic spline to describe changes in step counts before and after diagnosis.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>We analyzed the step count data of 326 patients with malignant solid tumors and 1388 patients with diabetes. Patients with cancer exhibited a 9.6% (95% CI 7.1%-12.1%; P<.001) reduction in step counts from baseline at the start of the diagnosis month, which further deepened to 12.4% (95% CI 9.5%-15.2%; P<.001) at 3 months and persisted at 7.1% (95% CI 4.2%-10.0%; P<.001) at 12 months, all relative to baseline. Conversely, in patients with diabetes, step counts remained relatively stable after diagnosis, with a slight upward trend, resulting in a change of +0.6% (95% CI -0.6% to 1.9%; P=.31) from baseline at 3 months after diagnosis. At 12 months after diagnosis, step counts remained decreased in the nonendoscopic subdiaphragmatic surgery group, with an 18.0% (95% CI 9.1%-26.2%; P<.001) reduction, whereas step counts returned to baseline in the laparoscopic surgery group (+0.3%, 95% CI -6.3% to 7.5%; P=.93).</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>The analysis of objective pre- and postdiagnostic step count data provided fundamental information crucial for understanding changes in PA among patients with cancer. While cancer diagnosis and treatment reduced PA, the decline may have already started before diagnosis. The study findings may help tailor exercise recommendations based on lifelog data for patients with cancer in the future.</p>","PeriodicalId":45538,"journal":{"name":"JMIR Cancer","volume":" ","pages":"e58093"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142899253","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
JMIR CancerPub Date : 2025-01-17DOI: 10.2196/57715
Allan Fong, Christian Boxley, Laura Schubel, Christopher Gallagher, Katarina AuBuchon, Hannah Arem
{"title":"Identifying Complex Scheduling Patterns Among Patients With Cancer With Transportation and Housing Needs: Feasibility Pilot Study.","authors":"Allan Fong, Christian Boxley, Laura Schubel, Christopher Gallagher, Katarina AuBuchon, Hannah Arem","doi":"10.2196/57715","DOIUrl":"10.2196/57715","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Patients with cancer frequently encounter complex treatment pathways, often characterized by challenges with coordinating and scheduling appointments at various specialty services and locations. Identifying patients who might benefit from scheduling and social support from community health workers or patient navigators is largely determined on a case-by-case basis and is resource intensive.</p><p><strong>Objective: </strong>This study aims to propose a novel algorithm to use scheduling data to identify complex scheduling patterns among patients with transportation and housing needs.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>We present a novel algorithm to calculate scheduling complexity from patient scheduling data. We define patient scheduling complexity as an aggregation of sequence, resolution, and facility components. Schedule sequence complexity is the degree to which appointments are scheduled and arrived to in a nonchronological order. Resolution complexity is the degree of no shows or canceled appointments. Location complexity reflects the proportion of appointment dates at 2 or more different locations. Schedule complexity captures deviations from chronological order, unresolved appointments, and coordination across multiple locations. We apply the scheduling complexity algorithm to scheduling data from 38 patients with breast cancer enrolled in a 6-month comorbidity management intervention at an urban hospital in the Washington, DC area that serves low-income patients. We compare the scheduling complexity metric with count-based metrics: arrived ratio, rescheduled ratio, canceled ratio, and no-show ratio. We defined an aggregate count-based adjustment metric as the harmonic mean of rescheduled ratio, canceled ratio, and no-show ratio. A low count-based adjustment metric would indicate that a patient has fewer disruptions or changes in their appointment scheduling.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>The patients had a median of 88 unique appointments (IQR 60.3), 62 arrived appointments (IQR 47.8), 13 rescheduled appointments (IQR 13.5), 9 canceled appointments (IQR 10), and 1.5 missed appointments (IQR 5). There was no statistically significant difference in count-based adjustments and scheduling complexity bins (χ24=6.296, P=.18). In total, 5 patients exhibited high scheduling complexity with low count-based adjustments. A total of 2 patients exhibited high count-based adjustments with low scheduling complexity. Out of the 15 patients that indicated transportation or housing insecurity issues in conversations with community health workers, 86.7% (13/15) patients were identified as medium or high scheduling complexity while 60% (9/15) were identified as medium or high count-based adjustments.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Scheduling complexity identifies patients with complex but nonchronological scheduling behaviors who would be missed by traditional count-based metrics. This study shows a potential link between","PeriodicalId":45538,"journal":{"name":"JMIR Cancer","volume":"11 ","pages":"e57715"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11758709/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143013843","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
JMIR CancerPub Date : 2025-01-17DOI: 10.2196/59464
Jessica N Rivera Rivera, Moran Snir, Emilie Simmons, Tara Schmidlen, Misha Sholeh, Melinda Leigh Maconi, Carley Geiss, Hayden Fulton, Laura Barton, Brian D Gonzalez, Jennifer Permuth, Susan Vadaparampil
{"title":"Developing and Assessing a Scalable Digital Health Tool for Pretest Genetic Education in Patients With Early-Onset Colorectal Cancer: Mixed Methods Design.","authors":"Jessica N Rivera Rivera, Moran Snir, Emilie Simmons, Tara Schmidlen, Misha Sholeh, Melinda Leigh Maconi, Carley Geiss, Hayden Fulton, Laura Barton, Brian D Gonzalez, Jennifer Permuth, Susan Vadaparampil","doi":"10.2196/59464","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2196/59464","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>National guidelines recommend germline genetic testing (GT) for all patients with early-onset colorectal cancer. With recent advances in targeted therapies and GT, these guidelines are expected to expand to include broader groups of patients with colorectal cancer. However, there is a shortage of genetic professionals to provide the necessary education and support for informed consent. As such, there is a pressing need to identify alternative approaches to facilitate and expedite access to GT.</p><p><strong>Objective: </strong>This study describes the development of a pretest education intervention, Nest-CRC, to facilitate the uptake of germline GT among patients with early-onset colorectal cancer. Patients with early-onset colorectal cancer and health care providers reviewed Nest-CRC, and their reactions and recommendations were captured using a nested mixed methods approach.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Using the learner verification approach, we conducted 2 sequential phases of surveys and interviews with English- and Spanish-speaking patients with early-onset colorectal cancer and health care providers. The surveys assessed participants' experiences with genetic services and provided immediate feedback on the Nest-CRC genetic education modules. Semistructured interviews evaluated participants' perceptions of self-efficacy, attraction, comprehension, cultural acceptability, and usability of Nest-CRC. Survey data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (mean, median, and proportions), while interview data were analyzed through line-by-line coding of the transcribed interviews. After each phase, Nest-CRC was refined based on participants' recommendations.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>A total of 52 participants, including 39 patients with early-onset colorectal cancer and 13 providers, participated in the study. Of these, 19 patients and 6 providers participated in phase 1 (N=25), and 20 patients and 7 providers participated in phase 2 (N=27). Most participants (phase 1: 23/25, 92%, to 25/25, 100%; phase 2: 24/27, 89%, to 27/27, 100%) agreed that each of the 5 education modules was easy to understand and helpful; 13 patients reported no history of GT, with 11 (85%) expressing interest in GT and 2 (15%) remaining unsure after completing Nest-CRC. Participants reported that Nest-CRC provided sufficient information to help them decide about GT. The tool was deemed acceptable by individuals from diverse backgrounds, and participants found it visually attractive, easy to comprehend, and user-friendly.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>The findings revealed that Nest-CRC is a promising strategy for facilitating pretest education and promoting GT. Nest-CRC has been refined based on participant recommendations and will be re-evaluated.</p>","PeriodicalId":45538,"journal":{"name":"JMIR Cancer","volume":"11 ","pages":"e59464"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143013841","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}