Acceptability, Utility, and Cost of a Mobile Health Cancer Screening Education Application for Training Primary Care Physicians in India

Abstract

PURPOSE.Mobile health (mHealth)-based oncology education can be a powerful tool for providing cancer screening knowledge to physicians, as mobile technology is widely available and inexpensive. We developed a mobile application (M-OncoED) to educate physicians on cancer screening and tested the acceptability, utility, and cost of two different approaches to recruit physicians. METHODS. M-OncoED was designed to perform pre-and post-learning assessments through the in-built quizzes; present case studies and educational materials for cervical, breast, and oral cancer screening; collect responses to interactive queries; document module completion; send reminders and alerts; and track user metrics, including number of sessions to complete each module and time spent per session. We tested two recruitment approaches: a broad-scale recruitment group, for which we relied on emails, messaging apps (e.g., WhatsApp), and phone calls, and the targeted recruitment group, for which we conducted a face-to-face meeting for the initial invitation. RESULTS. Overall, about 35% of those invited in the targeted group completed the course compared with about 3% in the broad-based recruitment group. The targeted recruitment approach was more cost efficient ($55.33 versus $109.43 per person). Cervical cancer screening knowledge increased by about 30 percentage points, and breast cancer screening knowledge increased by 10 percentage points. There was no change in knowledge for oral cancer scorings.CONCLUSION. This study has demonstrated the feasibility and utility of using an mHealth app to educate physicians. A more-intensive hands-on recruitment approach is likely required to engage physicians to download and complete the app. Future studies should assess the impact of mHealth tools on physician behavior and patient outcomes. The Oncologist 2021;9999:• • Implications for Practice: Mobile health (mHealth)-based oncology education can be a powerful tool for providing cancer screening knowledge to physicians, as mobile technology is widely available and inexpensive. This study has demonstrated the feasibility and utility of using an mHealth app to educate physicians, and illustrates the type of recruitment approach (face-to-face) that is likely required to incentivize physicians to download the app and complete the training.

Barriers and Facilitators for the Use of Telehealth by Healthcare Providers (HCP) in India - A Scoping Review

“…Of the total 53 studies, nearly half the studies (45%) were quantitative(21,26–28,31,33– 36,38,39,42,43,45,50,51,53,55,58,59,63,64,66,70), 14 (26%) were qualitative (13,20,22,29,32,37,44,46–48,60,65,67,69), 12 (23%) were mixed-methods (23–25,30,40,41,52,54,56,57,62,68) and 3 (6%) were review studies. (49,61,71) No study on the use of mHealth was published before 2013 and 64% (13,20–51,55) of the studies were published after 2018 with the maximum (n=12, 23%)(13,22,24–31,33,34) number of studies being published in 2021. The studies were conducted in tertiary care or teaching hospital settings (n=28)(22,23,26–29,31–38,46,47,49,55–59,61,63,65,68,69,71), community health centers (n=6)(20,21,42,44,60,66), primary health centers (n=16)(13,30,40,43,48,50–53),(39,54<...…”

Mobile Health (mHealth) Technology in Early Detection and Diagnosis of Oral Cancer-A Scoping Review of the Current Scenario and Feasibility

“…A remarkable improvement in knowledge level scores from an average of 6.3 to 13.7 on a 15-point scale was seen immediately after the 3-day training program, and this score further increased to 14.4 after 6 months [ 51 ]. On the other hand, oral cancer screening knowledge showed no change among physicians with the newly developed mobile application (M-OncoED) [ 52 ]. Table 3 shows qualitative studies reporting the suitability of mHealth for early screening of oral cancer.…”

Design and Process of Implementation Mobile Application Based Modular Training on Early Detection of Cancers (M-OncoEd) for Primary Care Physicians in India

“…Mobile health technology is a widely accepted method of training, especially in the health care field. ("How Technology Could Transform Medical Training, Ease Global Shortage of Doctors" n.d.), (Odendaal et al, 2020;Opoku et al, 2017) and MOncoEd was a well thought out pragmatic method to address the issue of training needs of doctors (Subramanian et al, 2021;Dankner et al, 2018). The medical field has applied mobile technology to remote learning in rural health education (Zawacki-Richter, 2009).…”