App-based assessment of patient-reported outcomes in the Molecular Tumor Board in the Center for Personalized Medicine - (TRACE)

Biomarker-based therapies are increasingly used in cancer patients outside clinical trials. Systematic assessment of patient-reported outcomes (PRO) is warranted to take patients’ perspective during biomarker-based therapies into consideration. We assessed feasibility of an electronic PRO assessment via a smartphone application. An interdisciplinary expert panel developed a smartphone application based on symptom burden and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) metrics reported in a retrospective analysis in 292 neuro-oncological patients. The app included validated assessments of health-related quality of life (HRQoL), burden of symptoms and psychological stress. Feasibility and usability were tested in a pilot study. Semi-structured interviews with patients and health care professionals (HCP) were conducted, transcribed and analyzed according to Mayring´s qualitative content analysis. Furthermore, we assessed compliance and descriptive data of ePROs. A total of 14 patients have been enrolled, (9 female, 5 male). A total of 4 HCPs, 9 patients and one caregiver were interviewed regarding usability/feasibility. Main advantages were the possibility to complete questionnaires at home and comfortable implementation in daily life. Compliance was high, e.g., 82% of the weekly distributed NCCN Distress Thermometer questionnaires were answered on time, however, with interindividual variability We observed a median distress score of 5 (range 0-10, 197 results, n=12, weekly assessed) and a median Global health score of 58.3 according to the EORTC QLQ-C30 instrument (range 16.7-100, 77 results, n=12, monthly assessed). This pilot study proved feasibility and acceptance of the app. We will therefore expand its application during biomarker-guided therapies to enable systematic PRO assessments.