The eSMART project: real time symptom management in the Irish Oncology Setting

“It was quite reassuring; you did feel that you were being monitored. You didn’t think if you put in those symptoms that you would slip through the…you know, that if you had really worrying symptoms you would have slipped through the system. Somebody would have picked it up” (Patient 11, McCann et al, 2009)

These are the perceptions of a patient who participated in a multicentre, randomised controlled trial (RCT) evaluating the impact of a mobile phone-based ‘advanced symptom management system’ (ASyMS) intervention on chemotherapy-related toxicities in UK-based patients with lung, breast or colorectal cancer. Overall, the study found that the use of the mobile phone-based intervention to monitor their chemotherapy-related symptoms was a positive experience for patients.1

The use of ASyMS resulted in better communication with health professionals, improvements in the management of their symptoms and a reassurance that their symptoms were being monitored even when they were at home. The reported improvements in symptom management were supported by the finding that patients who were randomised to the intervention arm of the RCT had significantly lower levels of fatigue in comparison to those patients in the control arm who received standard care.2