Smartphone sensors for monitoring cancer-related Quality of Life: App design, EORTC QLQ-C30 mapping and feasibility study in healthy subjects

[EN] Quality of life (QoL) indicators are now being adopted as clinical outcomes in clinical trials on cancer treatments. Technology-free daily monitoring of patients is complicated, time-consuming and expensive due to the need for vast amounts of resources and personnel. The alternative method of using the patients¿ own phones could reduce the burden of continuous monitoring of cancer patients in clinical trials. This paper proposes monitoring the patients¿ QoL by gathering data from their own phones. We considered that the continuous multiparametric acquisition of movement, location, phone calls, conversations and data use could be employed to simultaneously monitor their physical, psychological, social and environmental aspects. An open access phone app was developed (Human Dynamics Reporting Service (HDRS)) to implement this approach. We here propose a novel mapping between the standardized QoL items for these patients, the European Organization for the Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire (EORTC QLQ-C30) and define HDRS monitoring indicators. A pilot study with university volunteers verified the plausibility of detecting human activity indicators directly related to QoL. Funding for this study was provided by the authors' various departments, and partially by the CrowdHealth Project (Collective Wisdom Driving Public Health Policies (727560)) and the MTS4up project (DPI2016-80054-R). Asensio Cuesta, S.; Sánchez-García, Á.; Conejero, JA.; Sáez Silvestre, C.; Rivero-Rodriguez, A.; Garcia-Gomez, JM. (2019). Smartphone sensors for monitoring cancer-related Quality of Life: App design, EORTC QLQ-C30 mapping and feasibility study in healthy subjects. International Journal of Environmental research and Public Health. 16(3):1-18. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16030461 Number of Smartphone Users Worldwide from 2014 to 2020 (in Billions)https://www.statista.com/statistics/330695/number-of-smartphone-users-worldwide/ Mirkovic, J., Kaufman, D. R., & Ruland, C. M. (2014). Supporting Cancer Patients in Illness Management: Usability Evaluation of a Mobile App. JMIR mHealth and uHealth, 2(3), e33. doi:10.2196/mhealth.3359 Xing Su, Hanghang Tong, & Ping Ji. (2014). Activity recognition with smartphone sensors. Tsinghua Science and Technology, 19(3), 235-249. doi:10.1109/tst.2014.6838194 Schmitz Weiss, A. (2013). Exploring News Apps and Location-Based Services on the Smartphone. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 90(3), 435-456. doi:10.