Implementation and feasibility study of a remote monitoring system by ePROs in older adult patients with cancer

SIOG 2024

Published: 1 Nov 2024

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Dr Nicolas Bertrand - Centre Eugène Marquis, Rennes, France

Dr Nicolas Bertrand speaks to ecancer about implementation and feasibility study of a remote monitoring system by ePROs (electronic Patient-Reported Outcomes) in older adult patients with cancer based on real-life data in France and Belgium.

This study examines a remote patient monitoring system for older adults, analysing data from over 2300 patients across 56 centres in France and Belgium.

It reveals that while older adults use mobile and web applications, those over 85 take longer to complete tasks electronically.

Despite some adverse effects, over 90% of patients recover within two weeks of alerting the system, and satisfaction is high.

Recommendations advocate for broader access to RPM devices, regardless of age, while noting potential technological barriers.

I presented during the SIOG congress a study about implementation and feasibility of patient remote monitoring in older adults with cancer. It’s a real-world study about data from a data warehouse in France and Belgium. Around 56 centres in France and more than 2,300 patients.

What was the study design?

The data came from a data warehouse from Resilience, which is one of the biggest remote patient monitoring providers in Europe. So we collected all the data for the patients and we studied the patients older than 65 years old, which we presented 43% of the total population. There were a few oldest old patients, more than 85, with 92 patients but in total the study population is 2,300 patients.

What were the key results?

We studied many endpoints as the usage patterns of the device. We saw that older people used both mobile app and web applications. We saw that the oldest old patients have a longer time to answer the questionnaire because the patients receive weekly questionnaires. So for the oldest old it takes about 20 hours against 8 hours for the youngest ones.

We also studied the adverse outcomes and we saw that the oldest old had a higher rate of severe adverse events and there were more general symptoms such as fatigue, pain, degradation of performance status in the older old. We also saw that the RPM device remains highly effective because more than 90% of the patients have a good recovery of their symptoms upon alert two weeks after the alert. So they are very good results.

Finally, we showed that the satisfaction of the patients was really high. We measured a score called the net promoter score and it was really high with a score of 64, which is very good for this device.

What do you think is the significance of these results?

We saw in the data that RPM is highly effective in the older population, that the adherence was really good. Because we also studied the patients used the device on a 24-week period and the adherence was still between 70-80% at 24 weeks, which is really good. We saw that RPM was well used by the patients and the patients were satisfied about it. So we think that the RPM devices should be proposed to all the population under cancer treatment and the age is not a barrier for the use of these devices. There are other barriers, technological barriers, but clinicians shouldn’t be a barrier to propose this device to the patients.