New app for lung cancer patients proves stellar in early trial

A new smartphone, called Moovcare, has been proven to help lung cancer patients live longer and better by monitoring their symptoms and alerting doctors to potential problems, reports U.S. News.

In an early trial, 75 percent of high-risk lung cancer patients were alive one year after they started using the Moovcare app, compared to just 49 percent of patients provided typical cancer care. Patients lived, on average, seven months longer (about 19 months compared to an average of 12 months for nonusers). CT scans were also reduced.

"The number of imaging scans were reduced by 50 percent per patient per year," said study author Fabrice Denis, MD, a researcher at the Institut Inter-regional de Cancerologie Jean Bernard in Le Mans in France.

The trail monitored 133 patients with stage 3 or 4 lung cancer, and randomly assigned them to use either the Moovcare app or undergo standard follow-up.

Patients imputed their symptoms using Moovcare once a week in an effort to detect the 12 clinical symptoms associated with a relapse of lung cancer or a potentially dangerous medical condition associated with the disease. An algorithm triggered an email alert to the patient's cancer care team if it looked like high risk for a relapse or a medical emergency, said Denis.

“Because relapsing patients often wait weeks before seeing a doctor, they aren't always able to receive the best cancer care possible because they've become too sick to handle the toxic effects of chemotherapy,” said Denis.