Development of a remote monitoring program for melanoma/skin oncology patients at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre.
Authors: Ribeiro Mauricio Fernando Fernando Silva Almeida , Gregorio Nancy , Somji Faiza , Melwani Sheena , Lovas Mike , Macedo Alyssa , Gray Diana , Singh Raviya , Giovannetti Erika , Lee Suheon , Chong Sharon , Berlin Alejandro , Saibil Samuel , Spreafico Anna , Hogg David , Butler Marcus O. 
Published: June 2022

e18630

Background: The Melanoma/Skin Oncology (MSO) clinic supports > 200 patients on active treatment at any given time. In September 2018, the MSO clinic implemented a nurse-led proactive management program (IMBRASE) to support the monitoring of adverse events (AEs) in patients receiving immunotherapy (IO). Nurses conducted telephone calls at a pre-determined frequency to identify those who required immediate in-person assessment. Despite an initial 40% drop in emergency department visits in the first few months of implementation, insufficient human resources and lack of prioritization of assessments impacted the clinic’s ability to sustain this program. We sought to overcome this limitation by employing digital health technology to monitor and triage on-treatment patients for assessment (eIMBRASE program). Methods: MSO team worked alongside an internal innovation team (Cancer Digital Intelligence) to develop a remote assessment program with an algorithm able to prioritize patients by combining real-time biometrics and automatically scheduled electronic patient-reported outcomes (ePROs) data of individuals undergoing targeted-therapy and IO. This new digital tool will be accessible via smartphone/computer. It will enable patients to send their data to the clinical team and establish priorities based on patients’ complexity of symptoms. Results: eIMBRASE algorithm requires four data points to be displayed for the clinical team: overall priority, cumulative score (CS), biometric alert, and no response alert. The first two points are based on ePROs, for which we established a set of symptoms of interest for each treatment modality. Each symptom can be categorized in 1 of the 6 priority levels. Each priority is associated with a number of complexity points on a logarithmic scale from 0 - 400. After a questionnaire is submitted, a CS is generated for clinicians to determine which patient may be the most complex and deserve priority assessment. Regarding the third data point, oxygen saturation (SpO2) and temperature (T) measures are collected throughout the day and patients are flagged according to the following predefined thresholds: T - red alert > 38.5C, orange 38.1-38.4C, yellow 37.5-38C; and SpO2 - red alert £93%. Patients under the highest risk of AEs, for instance those on anti-CTLA4 + anti-PD1, are required to complete ePROs daily during the first 12 weeks. Patients under low-risk therapies are required to complete ePROs 1x/week. The tool triggers priority-oriented timeframe for medical contact. To minimize the influence of poor electronic literacy, patients will have their apps set up at clinic before treatment initiation. Conclusions: eIMBRASE development presents an alternative way to use digital health tools to potentially improve quality of care for MSO patients. A pilot study will be conducted to assess its feasibility, the impact in patients’ outcomes and satisfaction.