Cancer support & advice (CANadvice) m-health system for home monitoring and symptom management of patients receiving oral chemotherapy treatment

Introduction: Recent development in digital technology has raised the interest of many researchers in implementing technology in the domain of m-health to provide better service to patients. Capecitabine, an oral chemotherapeutic agent causes several side effects which need to be monitored to avoid severe health consequences in patients. Methodology: A multidisciplinary team of pharmacists, clinicians and developers, was assembled for the design and development of CANadvice system, a mobile android application for patients and a web interface for health care professionals to assist patients in monitoring chemotherapy side effects at home. The application provides real time medical or lifestyle advice to patients and sends alerts to health care professionals for intervention. Results and Discussion: Two prototypes were designed, implemented and evaluated. Interviews were carried out with 5 health care professionals to investigate the system's effectiveness. The results indicated in this paper recommend using such tool for monitoring side effects. Real time advice and the link to health care professionals were very well accepted.