Patient and Provider Perspectives on Symptom Monitoring During Outpatient Chemotherapy: Interview Study.

Background: Fluctuating symptoms and side effects are common during outpatient cancer treatment, and approaches to monitoring symptoms vary widely across providers, patients, and clinical settings. To design a remote symptom monitoring system that patients and providers find to be useful, it may be helpful to understand current clinical approaches to monitoring and managing chemotherapy-related symptoms among patients and providers and assess how more frequent and systematic assessment and sharing of data could improve patient and provider experiences.

Objective: The goals of this study were to learn about patient and provider perspectives on monitoring symptoms during chemotherapy, understand barriers and challenges to effective symptom monitoring at one institution, and explore the potential value of remote symptom monitoring between provider visits.