Feasibility Study of an ePRO Monitoring for Patients With Multiple Myeloma and Development of Item Lists

The trial is a feasibility study of a patient-reported outcome (PRO) monitoring for patients with multiple myeloma. Patients will report weekly PROs during treatment at our outpatient unit. The trial will describe the development of treatment-specific item lists to adequately capture relevant symptoms during therapy, evaluate the feasibility of the weekly symptom monitoring, and evaluate the healthcare professional usage of the system in clinical practice.

The item lists will supplement an already established patient-reported outcome measure (PROM) implementation for the Austrian Myeloma Registry (AMR) at the Department of Hematology in Innsbruck. For the development of the treatment-specific item lists, a review of the literature for symptoms reported in clinical trials of the respective treatment regimens will be conducted. Then, a consensus panel of multiple stakeholders will discuss the symptoms and relevant issues for each treatment group. In an iterative process, the item lists will be developed to capture the most relevant and clinically important symptoms during active therapy to maximize clinical usage.

The observational part of the trial will then test the feasibility of the electronic symptom monitoring and the treatment-specific item lists. Patients will be recruited who are already participating in a routine care patient-reported outcome monitoring. They will be given access to the web-based patient portal and asked to complete weekly assessments using the treatment-specific item lists. In larger intervals (every 6 weeks), they will also be asked to complete a larger questionnaire battery using the EORTC QLQ-C30 and the treatment-specific module (EORTC QLQ-MY20). In the patient portal, patients will also be able to review their own results and receive feedback and self-management advice. Patients will also receive reminders to remind them to use the patient portal.

For healthcare professionals, the system will display the results of the PROMs and trigger alerts if patients reach thresholds for clinical importance. A clinical nurse will monitor the recently completed PROMs and contact patients who exceed the thresholds.

Patients will stay on the symptom monitoring as long as they receive active treatment. They may be excluded if they move to stationary care, depending on their health status or if they want to end the monitoring. The feasibility of the weekly monitoring and items lists will be evaluated and patient feedback to the patient portal and item lists will be recorded and analysed.

Inclusion criteria

• Informed consent form signed
• sufficient language proficiency in German
• no overt cognitive impairments
• reporting to use the internet at least once a month
• able to log into a website using an individualized username and password (tested when patients are introduced to the patient portal)
• patients are currently receiving active therapy for the treatment of their multiple myeloma