Smart Healthcare Apps for Quality Cancer Patient Support

Background

Mobile Health (mHealth) has revolutionized the ability of citizens to manage their own health and personal health data. Personal health record (PHR) systems facilitate the collection of information about an individual’s health and health care, stored in an electronic format intended for use by consumers, patients or their informal caregivers. The electronic health record (EHR) is a more generic term and encompasses the PHR and the electronic medical record (EMR) concepts (Katehakis & Tsiknakis, 2006). PHR systems aim to address patients’ evolving needs using specific methods to improve their care and foresee health issues.

A PHR with cancer modules has been seen as a potentially useful tool for patients in cross-sector cancer care (Kondylakis et al., 2017a). It has the potential to support patients in managing their chronic illness. As a tool, it facilitates information exchange between patients and healthcare professionals as well as between healthcare professionals and/ or institutions across health care sectors. PHR adoption and use in the context of cancer is not yet widespread (Wiljer et al., 2010), however, when it is implemented, PHR use is frequent and increasing (Roehrs et al., 2017).