Recent Articles
Mobile health (mHealth) solutions have proven to be effective in a wide range of patient outcomes and have proliferated over time. However, a persistent challenge of digital health technologies, including mHealth, is that they are characterized by early dropouts in clinical practice and struggle to be used outside experimental settings or on larger scales.
A diagnosis of cancer in adolescence or young adulthood can pose many different and unique challenges for individuals, as well as their families and friends. Drawing on the concept of prehabilitation, the provision of high-quality, accessible, timely, reliable, and appropriate information, care, and support for young adults with cancer and their families is critical to ensure that they feel equipped and empowered to make informed decisions relating to their treatment and care. Increasingly, digital health interventions offer opportunities to augment current health care information and support provision. Co-designing these digital health interventions can help to ensure that they are meaningful and relevant to the patient cohort, thereby maximizing their accessibility and acceptability.
In 2022, it was estimated that more than 80,000 new cases of bladder cancer (BC) were diagnosed in the United States, 12% of which were locally advanced or metastatic BC (advanced BC). These forms of cancer are aggressive and have a poor prognosis, with a 5-year survival rate of 7.7% for metastatic BC. Despite recent therapeutic advances for advanced BC, little is known about patient and caregiver perceptions of different systemic treatments. To further explore this topic, social media can be used to collect the perceptions of patients and caregivers when they discuss their experiences on forums and online communities.
The human papillomavirus (HPV) is implicated in the causal pathway of cancers of the vulva, vagina, penis, cervix, anus, and oropharyngeal region. It is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States. Despite the documented safety and effectiveness of the HPV vaccine, rates lag behind those of other vaccines given at the same age.
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is currently the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States; however, it is mostly preventable with appropriate screening and is often treatable when detected at early stages. Many patients enrolled in an urban Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) clinic were found to be past due for CRC screening.
At the time of the UK COVID-19 lockdowns, online health forums (OHFs) were one of the relatively few remaining accessible sources of peer support for people living with breast cancer. Cancer services were heavily affected by the pandemic in many ways, including the closure of many of the customary support services. Previous studies indicate that loneliness, anxiety, distress, and depression caused by COVID-19 were common among people living with breast cancer, and this suggests that the role of OHFs in providing users with support, information, and empathy could have been of increased importance at that time.
As a patient with cancer, I witnessed how beneficial it was to be treated by a multidisciplinary health care team. I realized I already had my own team, in a sense. That is because I had treated my research students as colleagues from the get-go, and I did not abandon them when they graduated and moved on.
Precision health offers the promise of advancing clinical care in data-driven, evidence-based, and personalized ways. However, complex data sharing infrastructures, for-profit (commercial) and nonprofit partnerships, and systems for data governance have been created with little attention to the values, expectations, and preferences of patients about how they want to be engaged in the sharing and use of their health information. We solicited patient opinions about institutional policy options using public deliberation methods to address this gap.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, cancer centers rapidly adopted telehealth to deliver care remotely. Telehealth will likely remain a model of care for years to come and may not only affect the way oncologists deliver care to their own patients but also the physicians with whom they share patients.
A steady increase in colorectal and prostate cancer survivors and patients with these cancers is expected in the upcoming years. As a result of primary cancer treatments, patients have numerous additional complaints, increasing the need for cancer aftercare. However, referrals to appropriate cancer aftercare remain inadequate, despite a wide range of aftercare options. Caregivers and patients often do not know which aftercare is the most appropriate for the individual patient. Since characteristics and complaints of patients within a diagnosis group may differ, predefined patient clusters could provide substantive and efficient support for professionals in the conversation about aftercare. By using advanced data analysis methods, clusters of patients who are different from one another within a diagnosis group can be identified.
