Digital Phenotyping and Dynamic Monitoring of Adolescents Treated for Cancer to Guide Intervention: Embracing a New Era

A Systematic Review of the Scope of Study of mHealth Interventions for Wellness and Related Challenges in Pediatric and Young Adult Populations

“…mHealth technologies have ushered in the generation of "digital" phenotypes for disease monitoring and early detection. [2][3][4] These technologies are being evaluated for a range of clinical purposes, such as disease screening and monitoring as well as health behaviors associated with, recovery, disease management, and compliance with treatment regimens. [5][6][7][8] In parallel, mHealth interventions are being evaluated to promote and sustain healthy behaviors through approaches like daily monitoring, reminders and education to maintain well-being and wellness.…”

Digital Phenotyping of Behavioral Symptoms as the Next Frontier for Personalized and Proactive Cancer Care

“…More recently, digital health interventions such as digital phenotyping have shown considerable promise in the early and accurate identification of severe behavioral and psychosocial symptoms in patients with cancer. 2 The unprecedented social changes (ie, self-quarantine, contact tracing, and social distancing requirements) and broad transition to virtual care brought about by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic have also served as forcing function for the wide dissemination of digital phenotyping. Furthermore, the duration of the pandemic will likely entrench preferences for digitally enabled patientprovider interactions and home-based care options.…”

Comprehensive Pain Management Using Opioids for Children and Adolescents: Still a Wild Goose to Chase?

“…Innovative digital approaches to the monitoring and the care of patients offer an excellent opportunity to create predictive models of individual vulnerability based on the integration and interdependencies of diverse sources of information. Their analysis, then, allows the prediction of potential outcomes and disease trajectories, identifying those patients that are progressing from basic or moderate vulnerability for disease or treatment related negative events to an elevated risk [5]. Wren and coworkers suggest that non-pharmacological therapies provide the patients with a sense of "control" over their condition [2]: children and adolescents who can self-manage their pain demonstrate fewer depressive symptoms, fear of pain, functional disability, and negative coping strategies.…”

“…Digital tools are noninvasive, ecological, and allow continuous access which provides timely appreciation of treatment induced changes, as well as emotional, behavioral, and cognitive alterations. A digital toolbox has numerous benefits compared to traditional assessments and represents an actual opportunity to modify, replace, or accompany the existing more categorical and traditional methods [5]. Gathering evidence from different domains, ranging from biomarkers to subtle neurocognitive evidence, will allow a shift to a truly comprehensive multimodal dimensional methodology [7].…”

“…A profound change in data gathering and integration is necessary: information coming from multiple sources including non-pharmacological methods and digital tools must be managed in a thoughtful way. Quality measures must be incorporated, and the sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, and precision of methods, measurements, and device parameters need to be tested [5].…”