Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2023 Mar 15;15(6):1775.
doi: 10.3390/cancers15061775.

A Scoping Review and a Taxonomy to Assess the Impact of Mobile Apps on Cancer Care Management

Eshita Dhar  1   2 , Adama Ns Bah  1   2 , Irene Alice Chicchi Giglioli  3 , Silvia Quer  3 , Luis Fernandez-Luque  3 , Francisco J Núñez-Benjumea  4 , Shwetambara Malwade  2 , Mohy Uddin  5 , Umashankar Upadhyay  1   2   6 , Shabbir Syed-Abdul  1   2   7
Affiliations

A Scoping Review and a Taxonomy to Assess the Impact of Mobile Apps on Cancer Care Management

Eshita Dhar et al. Cancers (Basel). .

Abstract

Mobile Health (mHealth) has a great potential to enhance the self-management of cancer patients and survivors. Our study aimed to perform a scoping review to evaluate the impact and trends of mobile application-based interventions on adherence and their effects on health outcomes among the cancer population. In addition, we aimed to develop a taxonomy of mobile-app-based interventions to assist app developers and healthcare researchers in creating future mHealth cancer care solutions. Relevant articles were screened from the online databases PubMed, EMBASE, and Scopus, spanning the time period from 1 January 2016 to 31 December 2022. Of the 4135 articles initially identified, 55 were finally selected for the review. In the selected studies, breast cancer was the focus of 20 studies (36%), while mixed cancers were the subject of 23 studies (42%). The studies revealed that the usage rate of mHealth was over 80% in 41 of the 55 studies, with factors such as guided supervision, personalized suggestions, theoretical intervention foundations, and wearable technology enhancing adherence and efficacy. However, cancer progression, technical challenges, and unfamiliarity with devices were common factors that led to dropouts. We also proposed a taxonomy based on diverse theoretical foundations of mHealth interventions, delivery methods, psycho-educational programs, and social platforms. We suggest that future research should investigate, improve, and verify this taxonomy classification to enhance the design and efficacy of mHealth interventions.

Keywords: cancer; health outcomes; intervention; m-health; mobile apps; scoping review; taxonomy; treatment.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses for Scoping Review (PRISMA-ScR) flow chart of study identification and selection of studies.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Categorization of studies included in the scoping review based on methods and outcomes.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Flow of classification of the studies via taxonomy.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Foster C. The Need for Quality Self-Management Support in Cancer Care. BMJ Qual. Saf. 2021;31:1–4. doi: 10.1136/bmjqs-2021-013366. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Kutikov A., Weinberg D.S., Edelman M.J., Horwitz E.M., Uzzo R.G., Fisher R.I. A war on two fronts: Cancer care in the time of COVID-19. Ann. Intern. Med. 2020;172:756–758. doi: 10.7326/M20-1133. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Sung H., Ferlay J., Siegel R.L., Laversanne M., Soerjomataram I., Jemal A., Bray F. Global cancer statistics 2020: GLOBOCAN estimates of incidence and mortality worldwide for 36 cancers in 185 countries. CA: A Cancer J. Clin. 2021;71:209–249. doi: 10.3322/caac.21660. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Bluethmann S.M., Mariotto A.B., Rowland J.H. Anticipating the “silver tsunami”: Prevalence trajectories and comorbidity burden among older cancer survivors in the United States. Cancer Epidemiol. Biomark. Prev. 2016;25:1029–1036. doi: 10.1158/1055-9965.EPI-16-0133. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. McCorkle R., Ercolano E., Lazenby M., Schulman-Green D., Schilling L.S., Lorig K., Wagner E.H. Self-management: Enabling and empowering patients living with cancer as a chronic illness. CA: A Cancer J. Clin. 2011;61:50–62. doi: 10.3322/caac.20093. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources