Use of a Comprehensive, Mobile Application to Assist Cancer Patients With Diet, Nutrition and Activity

In the last decade, smartphones have become an essential part of society with the mobile application market offering services across all aspects of life, including healthcare. Mobile health care apps have developed a field of their own termed "mobile health" or m-health with apps available to help patients do everything from managing symptoms and tracking medications to improving treatment compliance. Apps have been developed specifically tailored for oncology patients. One randomized controlled trial provided oncology patients receiving palliative care with a mobile application that used artificial intelligence (AI) to regularly monitor and manage pain between clinic visits. Results showed that the app was an effective tool to manage pain. Patients who used the app reported an overall decrease in pain severity and experienced fewer inpatient hospitalizations due to cancer-related pain compared with patients who did not use the app. M-health applications are well utilized in low-income populations and among both English and Spanish speakers. Despite the exciting potential m-Health offers for providers and patients, it also presents challenges. One systematic review identified barriers to adoption of m-health apps by health care professionals including difficult user experience (i.e., users found the app difficult to use and navigate), design and technical issues, security concerns, and perceived usefulness. Therefore, when designing an m-Health app, care must be taken to ensure that it is functional, easy to use, and provides patients and providers with valuable information in order to ensure that users will engage with the app. M-health apps should also be designed to supplement information exchanged during clinical encounters, fill in gaps in clinical workflow, and be appropriate for the target patient population. Low socioeconomic status is associated with increased disease prevalence and low quality of life after diagnosis. Bronx county, New York, which is coterminous with the New York City borough of The Bronx, is an urban, medically underserved and economically depressed area, which is associated with an elevated relative rate of chronic diseases including obesity, diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease. Over 70% of patients served by the Montefiore-Einstein Cancer Center (MECC) live beneath the poverty line suggesting that the patient population served by MECC is at risk for poor nutrition status. With the goal of improving availability of evidence-based nutritional information to MECC patients, both in the active-treatment and survivorship settings, the study team has developed "RestoreMe," an easy-to-use mobile device application that provides nutrition education, personalized recommendations, recipes, exercises and more. RestoreMe also allows cancer patients and providers an easy-to-use resource with which to communicate directly with one another, which may increase patient engagement and compliance with their overall care. In this study, the study team will investigate the regularity of app use by patients and which functions of the app are used effectively and most often. Usage trends specific to particular patient subgroups will also be evaluated. The results of this feasibility study will inform a future prospective interventional study using the RestoreMe app.