Beatson
Background
The Beatson Oncology Centre is the lead centre for the delivery of non-surgical cancer care for the West of Scotland. More and more patients are receiving chemotherapy at home, where they prefer to be. However, patients at home can often feel isolated, and welcome expert advice about any symptoms they may be having. The Beatson Centre, working with the Department of Nursing at University of Stirling, were interested in using hand-held technology to provide better monitoring and support for these patients.
Key Issues
- Many patients had no experience using a computer, and would have been easily frightened by complicated technology.
- Patient ages ranged from mid 20's to mid 70's.
- Patients would only receive 10-15 minutes instruction on the use of the system, from a nurse.
- Patient confidentiality and security of data was a significant issue.
- Time constraints for the new system development were very tight.
The Solution
- We worked with the Department of Nursing at the University of Stirling, staff at the Beatson Oncology Centre and patients to produce a very simple, easy to use application for the PDA.
- Patients use a PDA to complete daily questionnaires regarding their current symptoms and their severity. Dynamically created symptom advice is then instantly given to the patient.
- Patients send the completed questionnaires to their clinic via the standard telephone network, using a modem. If a patient's symptoms are severe their nurse is alerted via email.
- Nurses can monitor all patients' symptoms information as it arrives at the clinic by way of a back-end application on the clinic desktop.
The Results
- We provided a simple, useful application within a short timescale.
- The application was used in a trial by a group of 20 patients receiving chemotherapy for bowel or lung cancer.
- Patient feedback has been very positive.
- Stirling University Nursing Department are running another trial from February until October 2006 within different centres with the ASyMS system - so called as it is no longer specific to the Beatson Oncology Centre
"Patients have been really enthusiastic about the concept. The information they receive is very clearly presented, and it seems this could be a tremendous help to them. This could be a real step forward in symptom management for many groups of patients, and offers exciting opportunities for enhancing specialist input in community-based care." Professor Nora Kearney, Stirling University Nursing Dept.