Designing and Evaluating a Mobile-based Self-care Application for Patients with Gastrointestinal Cancer to Manage Chemotherapy Side Effects

Controlling and managing the side effects of chemotherapy is one of the most serious challenges that patients with gastrointestinal cancer encounter. A promising technique to overcome these challenges is using informative mobile-based applications. The aim of this study was to design and evaluate a mobile-based application to help patients with gastrointestinal cancer to manage the possible side effects caused by chemotherapy.  

This descriptive-applied study was performed in 2 stages. In the first stage, a needs assessment was performed where the opinions of 4 oncologists and 27 patients with gastrointestinal cancer were obtained by use of a researcher-designed questionnaire. In the second stage of the study, based on the identified needs from the first stage, an application prototype was designed and later evaluated. Participants were asked to use the application for 1 week to evaluate the usability of the application. The Questionnaire for User Interaction Satisfaction Version 5.5 was used for evaluation. The results of the study were analyzed using descriptive statistics and SPSS software Version 22.  

Of the 34 data elements obtained in the first step, 30 gained a mean above 3.75 and were considered in designing the application. The following features were included in the application: demographic data, history, clinical data, managing psychological and psychiatric challenges, lifestyle information, management of side effects, communication possibility, and other application features. Also, the evaluation results showed that the users gave a mean of 7.12 to the application and believed its usability was good.  

This application and its capabilities can help patients with gastrointestinal cancer undergoing chemotherapy to better perform self-care processes, improve their health status, and reduce the side effects of chemotherapy.