Understanding data and information needs for palliative cancer care to target mobile phone-based intervention development in Uganda and Zimbabwe Palliative care involves the prevention and relief of physical, emotional, social, and spiritual suffering associated with any chronic or life-threatening illness, beginning from the time of diagnosis. In sub-Saharan Africa, palliative care has historically focused on supporting patients with HIV/AIDS. However, increasing numbers of both cancer cases and cancer deaths mean that palliative care services urgently need to adapt to support affected patients and their caregivers. Around 80% of cancers are incurable at the time of detection and diagnosis. It is crucial to invest in and develop palliative cancer care to support the quality of life of patients in the later stages of their illness.   Palliative cancer care will remain an essential component of healthcare delivery in sub-Saharan Africa, independent of efforts to improve cancer prevention and treatments. Through research, our team have been developing approaches to gathering data that can help shape provision of palliative care for cancer patients and their caregivers. This has involved developing measures for accurately and systematically capturing information about a patient's needs for support and their outcomes following palliative care intervention (e.g. pain medication). In order to extend this work, we need to explore tools for easily and securely capturing and sharing this information to guide palliative care service development. Our team have identified widespread use of mobile phones by patients and health professionals across palliative care services in the region. This includes a World Health Organization (WHO) pilot project capturing information via mobile phones from caregivers of palliative care patients in Uganda, Zimbabwe and India (called 'mPalliative'). Our team are supporting delivery and evaluation of this project for the sub-Saharan Africa sites. Clear potential for using mobile phones for capturing information has been demonstrated. However, it is essential to now undertake research to understand the best ways to collect data using mobile phones to make sure it is relevant to needs of patients, caregivers, health professionals and policymakers; this work is not planned and has not been undertaken previously.  Pump-priming funding will enable the team to create a consortium that will work together to guide the development of mobile phone-based approaches in palliative cancer care in sub-Saharan Africa. The consortium will include researchers, policymakers, non-governmental organisations and leading technology partners. We will also undertake interviews to understand how mobile phone-based approaches can be used as part of service delivery to capture data that can directly inform development of palliative cancer care. We will gather patient and caregiver perspectives on how mobile phones can be used in an acceptable and sustainable way to support information collection and communication with health professionals. For health professionals, we will identify how patient-level data reflecting experience and outcomes (obtained using mobile phones) can directly influence their clinical practice and inform the development of current service provision. For policymakers, we will understand what data would be useful to gather (in what format and why), to inform decision making and commissioning around palliative cancer care. These perspectives, from across the health system, will provide strong foundations on which to pursue substantive funding to undertake the development and evaluation of mobile phone-based interventions to develop palliative cancer care in sub-Saharan Africa.   Research activities linked to this pump-priming award will occur in Uganda and Zimbabwe. Both countries currently lead efforts to develop palliative care services across sub-Saharan Africa and have demonstrated capacity to support research activities making them both ideal partner countries. There will be multiple opportunities for sharing our findings across other countries. The Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) supports cutting-edge research to address challenges faced by developing countries. The fund addresses the UN sustainable development goals. It aims to maximise the impact of research and innovation to improve lives and opportunity in the developing world.