Personalising cancer care with digital PROMs

An understanding of the patient’s experience with their illness and treatment is integrally linked to personalising cancer care and making meaningful treatment choices that matter for health outcomes. Patient-reported outcomes measures (PROMs) have classically been captured using paper-based methods, which are often logistically burdensome and expensive. A small pilot study by Vinehealth Digital Ltd (now part of Sciensus), however, illustrates how digital solutions can fundamentally change things: empowering patient engagement while gaining invaluable insight at a fraction of the cost.

Study overview

A study, “Evaluating the Impact of Digital PROMs Collection in an Outpatient Breast Cancer Clinic: A Feasibility Pilot,” was conducted in London, from September to December 2022 by Tay N. and co-authors affiliated with Vinehealth Digital Ltd, Imperial College London, and Cromwell Hospital. This research set out to assess the feasibility and associated benefits of Cancer Companion in terms of digital PROMs collection in clinical practice.

The importance of PROMs in cancer care

PROMs are crucial tools that provide insight from a patient’s perspective with regard to symptoms, functional status, and quality of life. Such measures would be very important in guiding patient care, especially in cancer treatment, where symptom burden and emotional wellbeing have dominant impacts on both treatment outcome and patient satisfaction.

Traditionally, PROMs have been collected using paper questionnaires – a method typically resulting in low response rates and high operational costs.

Learn more about our digital solutions that enable a streamlined digital PROMs collection to improve patient care and engagement, leading to significant cost savings and better health outcomes.

The challenge with paper-based PROMs

Of course, collecting PROMs on paper is a laborious job, and it doesn’t come cheap either. Their estimation at Cromwell Hospital was that distributing, chasing, and data entry from paper-based PROMs cost them about £63 per patient. Added to this, the response rate from paper questionnaires was only 7%, making meaningful, actionable data hard to collate.

Impact of digital PROMs

Digital PROMs collection has several advantages to the traditional methods. These include a higher response rate that ensures comprehensive data, lower costs thus suitable for routine clinical practice. Real-time data provided by the patients may further enable the health providers to pick up any potential issues at an early stage and therefore improve the overall quality of care and outcomes.

Benefits for patients and healthcare providers

For patients:

• Digital PROMs and symptom tracking empowers patients to actively participate in their care.
• Leads to better treatment outcomes and improved quality of life.
• The ease of use and real-time feedback provided by the Cancer Companion app enhances patient satisfaction and engagement.

For healthcare providers:

• The high completion rates and cost savings make digital PROMs a valuable tool for healthcare providers.
• Captures comprehensive data on patient experiences, clinicians can tailor treatment plans more effectively and respond promptly to any complications.
• Reduces the need for emergency interventions and hospital admissions.