Recent Articles
The number of cancer survivors is steadily increasing worldwide, leading to an increased demand for long-term follow-up and supportive care. Many survivors face ongoing physical and psychosocial issues that highlight the need for innovative management approaches. Mobile health applications offer potential benefits by facilitating patient-led follow-ups, self-management, and more efficient use of healthcare resources. Although the market for cancer-related mobile apps has grown rapidly, their sustainability and scientific basis remain unclear. In the EU, the Medical Device Regulation (MDR), which has been in effect since May 2021, has introduced stricter criteria for classifying medical devices, including certain software applications. While aiming to improve patient safety, MDR could pose challenges for small companies and academic developers, potentially limiting the availability of such applications. No scoping review has delineated the changes in active applications before and after the implementation of the new legislation regulating medical devices.
Mobile Health (mHealth) represents a promising instrument for optimizing symptom management and important lifestyle strategies that enhance self-care and the quality of healthcare for cancer patients. The ALIBIRD mHealth platform is a digital health solution specifically designed for the telemonitoring of oncology patients, fostering patient empowerment and supporting clinical decision-making.
A peripherally inserted central catheter (PICC) for vesicant or long-term chemotherapy (CTx) is recommended for safe and sustainable drug delivery. However, maintaining its benefits requires regular and careful self-management. Although medical staff provide education and telephone consultation, proactive support accessible at any time or location remains limited. Therefore, we developed a rule-based chatbot to support PICC self-management.
Reliance on telehealth increased dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic, introducing new opportunities to consider the use of telehealth across the cancer control continuum. However, patient, clinician, and staff perspectives about the types of cancer care appointments that are considered appropriate and the clinical care needs to support expanded remote care services are limited. Understanding older adults’ diverse technology needs and perspectives is especially important given that they comprise a large and growing proportion of the cancer patient population.
Sexual health concerns following prostate cancer treatment are common yet often insufficiently addressed in clinical practice, particularly among men who have sex with men (MSM). These individuals may face additional barriers stemming from heteronormative assumptions, limited disclosure, and a lack of culturally tailored information. As generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) chatbots become increasingly accessible, patients are using these systems to seek sensitive health information outside traditional care settings. While prior research has focused on the accuracy and safety of chatbot-generated health advice, less attention has been paid to how responses are framed, enacted, and experienced in situated sexual minority contexts.
Postprostatectomy incontinence (PPI) is a common complication after robot-assisted radical prostatectomy and significantly impairs patients’ quality of life. Although behavioral interventions such as pelvic floor muscle training and bladder diaries are evidence-based, their effectiveness is often limited by poor adherence and lack of personalization.
Surveillance is noted to be an important part of survivorship to detect recurrence and/or second primary lung cancer (SPLC) at a curable stage. However, current surveillance guidelines remain controversial, and the factors providers consider in clinical decision-making are neither well-defined nor consistently applied.
Growing interest surrounds how internet search behaviours might provide digital signals of disease prior to diagnosis, for example when people search symptoms or potential remedies online. Internet browsing data offers novel opportunities for understanding response to symptoms, public health surveillance and early intervention in conditions such as cancer. However, the acceptability of using such sensitive data in medical research remains unclear, particularly among individuals at higher risk of health and digital exclusion, such as older adults and those from minority ethnic groups or with a lower socio-economic status.
Patients with pediatric cancer often experience reduced physical activity (PA) due to treatment-related fatigue, functional limitations, and lack of structured exercise programs. Digital health solutions, including wearable sensors and augmented reality (AR)-based interventions, may offer new possibilities for monitoring and improving PA in this population.
