1 in 2 people will be diagnosed with cancer during their lifetime with over 350,000 new cancer diagnoses per year (UK). Cancer treatment is a complex process. Patients experience a range of symptoms as a consequence of their disease and their treatment. Sometimes, the treatment itself can lead to specific life-threatening complications.Patients who recover may be left with lasting physical and psychological consequences. A third of those who are suffering from cancer or who have recovered from it classify their health as 'average to poor' which is double the rate reported by individuals without health problems. There is an ongoing need to offer patients personalised support through their cancer journey and to identify and minimise complications.
This need for personalised cancer care is emphasised in the NHS Long Term Plan (2019). A key aim of which is to improve cancer survival but with a focus on giving patients 'more control over their health' through improved self-management. The long-term plan identifies a need for digitally-enabled care to empower patients and highlights that artificial intelligence (AI) and digital clinical decision support could play a role in this regard.
Wearable vital signs monitors offer a solution by which patients can be monitored more frequently and in more detail during cancer treatment. There is a huge variety of wearable monitors which range from commercially available well-being trackers to CE marked medical devices. The devices themselves take many forms which may vary in their acceptability to patients and utility to health care professionals. The parameters which can be monitored range from traditional vital signs to more holistic measures of sleep, stress and activity. Such information could help to identify individuals who are recovering well, those who are experiencing specific symptoms or those who need extra assistance.
The availability of commercial well-being monitors is growing rapidly and monitors are becoming progressively more sophisticated. Monitors are also increasingly used in medical research in conjunction with or in place of formal medical devices. This trend has been highlighted in a recent systematic review in which the authors noted the need for further research to understand the validity and acceptability of using such devices in an outpatient healthcare setting. This is particularly true for patients suffering from cancer, where the vast majority of wearable device research has focused upon exercise trackers, the breast cancer tumour type and patients who have already completed their cancer treatment. In addition, the acceptability of such devices to patients has been shown to vary. The COMPARE study reported that patients are broadly supportive of artificial intelligence (AI) and wearable devices whilst a study in patient genitourinary cancer found that acceptability of wearable devices varied between 100% (40-49 years) and 40% (80-89 years).
The situation is broadly the same for wearable vital signs monitors which are registered as medical devices. Whilst these devices have been more extensively studied, the majority of research does not pertain to cancer patients and no specific use case has been identified in this patient population.
Therefore, before wearable vital signs monitors can play a role in cancer care it is essential that the acceptability of the range of devices is formally evaluated in a variety of cancer types, in a broad demographic of patients, over the duration of cancer treatment and in a variety of treatment modalities and settings. The investigators aim to understand the potential of these devices to offer new insights and learn if the information provided can be useful to patients and healthcare professionals.
