Clinical trial NCT03996642: Feasibility of Delivering an Avatar Life-review Intervention to Support Patients With Active Cancer
Official title: Feasibility of Delivering an Avatar Life-review Intervention to Support Patients With Active Cancer
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
Conditions: Cancer
Keywords: active
cancer
avatar
life-limiting
palliative care
Lead sponsor: Virginia Commonwealth University
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: Massey Cancer Center
First posted: 2019-06-25
Enrollment: 11
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 18
Standard ages: ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: NA
Intervention model: SINGLE_GROUP
Intervention model description: This study will use a one-group observational design to establish feasibility and acceptability of Avatar therapy intervention in patients with advanced cancer.
Primary purpose: BASIC_SCIENCE

Brief summary: The objective of the study is to determine the feasibility and acceptability of an integrated art and technology, storytelling, life review platform for patients with active cancer. The VoicingHan project is an avatar storytelling platform designed for patients with advanced cancer receiving palliative care at Virginia Commonwealth University's Massey Cancer Center. VoicingHan supports terminally ill patients by using oral storytelling as an artistic medium to facilitate patients' interactive performances. Movement-based, creative expression has been shown to reduce stress and depression. By projecting movement-based actions onto an avatar, this can serve as a tool to express emotional distress, address satisfaction with care, and view cancer in a different light.

Detailed description: Life reviews have been used in palliative care to help individuals integrate memories into a meaningful whole, providing a balanced view of the past, present and future. Life review is also an evaluative process, enabling participants to examine how memories contribute to the meaning of their life.

VoicingHan, the software program that will be used in this study, provides an illusion that the Avatar is speaking, allowing users to observe their stories in real time, potentially encouraging deeper reflection and memory retrieval. The technology uses motion capture (MoCap) to translate human movement into a digital platform. MoCap offers several advantages: lightweight, sensitive to minute movement, and user-friendly.

Patients will select avatars from different age groups during their sessions, allowing them to retrieve specific, positive memories of different lifetime periods and facilitating a more candid autobiographical memory. Creative expression may serve as a vehicle for patients with a life limiting illness in finding purpose and creating a sense of meaning. The integration of art and technology into a storytelling, life-review platform through means of engaging the physical, psychological, and spiritual domains will support patients to contemplate their own mortality.

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* Participants must be 18 years of age or older
* Patient participants must have metastatic or locally recurrent cancer
* Participants must be able to understand English
* Participants must be ambulatory
* Ability and willingness to sign a written informed consent document

Exclusion Criteria:

* Participants who cannot understand written or spoken English
* Any prisoner and/or other vulnerable persons as defined by NIH (45 CFR 46, Subpart B, C and D).

Primary outcomes:
measure: Portion of successfully completed sessions
timeFrame: 2 months
measure: Patient's perceived benefits of intervention
timeFrame: 15 minutes
measure: The ability to recruit patients to participate in the Avatar Therapy intervention
timeFrame: 2 months
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Determine length of time required to set-up the technology
timeFrame: 10 minutes
measure: Determine the average time per session for each participant
timeFrame: 60 minutes
measure: Determine the number of intervention sessions needed per patient
timeFrame: 5 minutes
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Richmond
country: United States
facility: Virginia Commonwealth University
state: Virginia
Study officials:
affiliation: Virginia Commonwealth University
name: Egidio Del Fabbro, MD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
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