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PURPOSE: To codesign, develop, and evaluate a smartphone app that includes patient-reported measures of symptoms and real-time advice in children's cancer. METHODS: The Oncology Hub is a comprehensive approach to symptom management that includes a suite of codesigned tools and resources including clinical algorithms to determine the level of concern, symptom management advice, and resources for families of children with cancer. The evaluation involved Think Aloud interviews with parent and adolescent patients to complete tasks in the app as well as a User Experience questionnaire (score range, 0-120) and qualitative feedback. The accuracy of algorithms was determined by repeated testing of inputs and outputs over 4 weeks. RESULTS: Design and wireframes were iteratively refined through consultation with parents and adolescents confirming the final design. Beta testing evaluation was then completed by 25 participants including two adolescents. Across all participants, 84% of tasks were easy to navigate, and the Oncology Hub demonstrated high usability, usefulness, and acceptability with participants' scores ranging between 90 and 120 (mean = 112.2, standard deviation = 9.43). Qualitative feedback was positive. Testing of algorithms identified inconsistencies in understanding between clinical research and coding teams; refinements were made until the expected response notifications were returned with 100% accuracy. CONCLUSION: Technology offers new ways to think about how clinicians and families communicate and share information to harness the best of community and hospital services. Understanding how information is exchanged using health apps, and how this affects clinical workflow is critical to successful implementation, and optimizing symptom assessment and management in children with cancer. Want to improve communication about cancer symptom in children? This article describes new ways to use smartphone apps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Variations in clinical practice contribute to negative outcomes for children with cancer. Research in this area is imperative to standardise practice, yet such research is challenging to undertake, and a significant proportion of studies fail. A common reason for failure is poor recruitment, yet little information is available to support researchers and clinicians planning such research.Methods: Our primary aim was to describe the recruitment strategies and outcomes in a tertiary children's hospital across multiple observational supportive care studies. Secondary aims were to establish principles to improve both recruitment strategies and the reporting of recruitment. We undertook a retrospective descriptive analysis of the recruitment logs and data from three studies in pediatric oncology. The mean time to recruit one participant was calculated. Common reasons for not approaching eligible participants and reasons potential participants declined are described.Results: Of the 235 potential candidates across all studies, 186 (79%) were approached and of these 125 (67%) provided consent, with 117 (63%) completing baseline measures. We estimated recruitment per participant required an average 98 min of experienced research nurse time. Four factors are described that influence recruitment and six principles are outlined to maximise recruitment and the generalisability of research findings.Conclusions: We highlight the recruitment experiences across three different projects in children's cancer supportive care research and provide a roadmap for other researchers planning to undertake clinical research in pediatrics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]