Electronic Symptom Monitoring Intervention for Hospitalized Patients With Cancer

Mass General Brigham

Status: Completed

Conditions: Cancer

Treatments: Other: IMPROVED intervention

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT03396510

17-567

Details and patient eligibility

About

This research study is evaluating a new way to deliver oncology care for patients with cancer

Full description

Patients with cancer may experience a considerable symptom burden, often requiring hospitalizations for symptom management. The study doctors want to know if daily electronic monitoring of the symptoms, such as pain, nausea, constipation, and diarrhea may improve care while participants are hospitalized.

The goal of this study is to evaluate a new way to deliver oncology care where patients' symptoms are systematically monitored during their hospital admission. The investigators are studying whether patients whose clinicians receive their patients' detailed symptom reports each day have improved symptom management compared to those whose clinicians do not receive their patients' detailed symptom reports each day.

The study will use questionnaires to measure the participant symptoms and involves participating in a study for as long as the participants are admitted to the hospital. The information the investigators collect will help them determine if electronic symptom monitoring improves the care of patients with cancer

Enrollment: 390 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Age 18 or older
• Diagnosed with advanced cancer (defined as receiving treatment with palliative intent as per chemotherapy order entry designation, oncology clinic notes, and/or trial consent forms, or not receiving chemotherapy but followed for incurable disease as per oncology clinic notes)
• Admitted to the oncology service at Massachusetts General Hospital
• Verbal fluency in English

Exclusion criteria

• Unwilling or unable to participate in the study
• Admitted electively
• Participated during a previous admission

Trial design

Primary purpose: Supportive Care

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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390 participants in 2 patient groups

IMPROVED intervention

Experimental group

Description:

Patients randomized to the IMPROVED intervention will self-report their symptoms each day using a tablet computer. If any patient refuses or is unable to complete the symptom assessment on the computer, the study team will permit them to use paper versions. At morning rounds each day, the clinical team will view reports detailing their patients' symptom burden. Patients randomized to IMPROVED will have their symptoms presented to their inpatient oncology team, but the study team will not provide guidance about what actions to take in response to patients' symptoms.

Treatment:

Other: IMPROVED intervention

Usual Care

No Intervention group

Description:

Usual Care per hospital standard will be administered. Participants receiving usual care will also self-report their symptoms each day using tablet computers. However, these patients' clinicians will not receive their symptom reports.