When Work Hits Home: The Cancer-Treatment Journey of a Clinical Scientist Driving Digital Medicine
Date/Time
January 10, 2023
Discussion Topic
Patients’ input on outcome measures, measurement tools, and a general understanding of experience going through treatment has become increasingly important for scientific communities, drug developers, and regulators. We discussed a unique example of a treatment journey of a patient who is also a scientist. This patient shares her experience of digital self-monitoring after a suspected cancer diagnosis and treatment. The patient assembled a digital kit at home, enabling the collection of vital signs and physical activity data, kept a diary, and reviewed the wearable data, sharing the results with treating physicians. The patient’s data set was also analyzed to identify data parameters that could be of utility for future research aimed at improving remote care delivery and, in addition, to understand the generalizability of the N=1 results. This is a rare opportunity to derive insights about digital measures of health status with direct access to the patient who is uniquely qualified to collect data and support interpretation of the results.
