Remote Monitoring of the Performance Status and Burden of Symptoms of Patients With Gastrointestinal Cancer Via a Consumer-Based Activity Tracker: Quantitative Cohort Study (Preprint)

BACKGROUND The number of older patients with gastrointestinal cancer is increasing due to an aging global population. Minimizing reliance on an in-clinic patient performance status test to determine a patient’s prognosis and course of treatment can improve resource utilization. Further, current performance status measurements cannot capture patients' constant changes. These measurements also rely on self-reports, which are subjective and subject to bias. Real-time monitoring of patients' activities may allow for a more accurate assessment of patients’ performance status while minimizing resource utilization. OBJECTIVE This study investigates the validity of consumer-based activity trackers for monitoring the performance status of patients with gastrointestinal cancer. METHODS A total of 27 consenting patients (63% male, median age 58 years) wore a consumer-based activity tracker 7 days before chemotherapy and 14 days after receiving their first treatment. The provider assessed patients using the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group Performance Status (ECOG-PS) scale and Memorial Symptom Assessment Scale-Short Form (MSAS-SF) before and after chemotherapy visits. The statistical correlations between ECOG-PS and MSAS-SF scores and patients’ daily step counts were assessed. RESULTS The daily step counts yielded the highest correlation with the patients' ECOG-PS scores after chemotherapy (P CONCLUSIONS This study demonstrates the feasibility of using inexpensive, consumer-based activity trackers for the remote monitoring of performance status in the gastrointestinal cancer population. The findings need to be validated in a larger population for generalizability.