Wearables Will Help Researchers Improve Therapy for Multiple Myeloma Patients

Mobile health has been making its way into the mainstream for years now. Now, mobile health data in the form of a wearable is part of a study to improve treatment therapies for multiple myeloma patients. 

Medidata and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) are working together to study behavior, movement, and sleep quality in multiple myeloma patient who are undergoing induction chemotherapy treatment. The patients will wear a fitness tracker in the days before treatment to give researchers an understanding of their baseline behavior before wearing it continuously throughout four cycles of the cancer therapy, about four months. 

Neha Korde, MD, assistant attending for the Myeloma Service at MSK, said in a press release, "All cancer patients face health challenges from the disease as well as the side effects of treatment. But the challenges are particularly acute for those who suffer from multiple myeloma, a painful blood cancer that affects the bones. We will be able to use mHealth technologies to gauge how patients sleep, how they move, and how they feel with greater precision."

The quality-of-life data is being gathered via fitness trackers, Medidata's Patient Cloud ePRO smartphone app, and Medidata's SensorLink cloud platform. According to the company, SensorLink gathers and processes the mobile health data in real time. That real-time aspect is key to the study's objective.

"By combining subjective and objective data, we are hoping to get insights on a daily basis, as opposed to asking patients to recall how they felt weeks ago," Kara Dennis, managing director of mHealth at Medidata, told MD+DI. "We believe that these technologies will help MSK better understand their patients' quality of life by providing opportunities for patients to provide feedback in real-time."

Dennis added that Medidata expects to see mobile health technologies being used across many types of therapeutic areas and various clinical trial phases. "Increasingly, sponsors are initiating dialogue with regulatory agencies to discuss their planned approach, including how they will analyze clinical data as well as data quality," she pointed out.

Glen de Vries, Medidata president, said in the release, "Success in cancer treatment is measured not just by what it does to the disease but what it does to the patient's body and mind. Our collaboration with MSK will bring to bear the very best technology and data analytics to help researchers begin to identify multiple myeloma treatments that best enhance quality as well as quantity of life."

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