Online Psychosocial Cancer Screening, Monitoring and Stepped Treatment in Cancer Survivors

Summary

This multicenter randomized controlled study will appraise the effectiveness and cost-utility of an e-health ecosystem with integrated and stepped psychosocial services that will be compared with the usual psychosocial care. The study is developed in the acute survival phase among breast cancer survivors. The outcomes of both interventions will be compared in terms of the amount of waiting time to receive psychosocial care and changes in several psychosocial variables. Finally, a comparative economic analysis will be conducted in other relevant psychosocial and health parameters. The e-health platform is expected to outperform usual care in the aforementioned indicators, while reaching high acceptability and usability by survivors, and additionally reducing costs for health providers.

Conditions

• Breast Cancer
• Psychological Distress
• Emotional Disorder

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Online integrated and stepped psychosocial care

This program features four levels of care, increasing in intensity of psychosocial care as patients move from one level to the next one. Step 1: Screening and monitoring of several psychosocial variables through the central mobile application of the program (App ICOnnecta't). Step 2: Online guided and self-help psychoeducation Campus in which patients can consult videos and online resources, co-constructed between health professionals and patients, containing reliable and rigorous information related to the oncological process. Step 3: Online community of psychosocial support. Participants can choose from 12 cancer-related discussion forums and share with the community any health-related question that worries them fostering, thus, debate and stimulating peer-support. Step 4: Intensive online group psychotherapy (App ICOnnecta't Videoconsultation), based on the Group Positive Psychotherapy program for cancer survivors (Ochoa, Sumalla, Maté, Castejón, Rodríguez et al., 2010).

BEHAVIORAL

Usual psychosocial care

This active control group will receive the standard psychosocial treatment for cancer survivors in the participating centers, led by a clinical psychologist and consisting of 8 individual, 45/60-minute sessions, each of which every 1-2 months, focused on providing emotional support and psychoeducation during the first year of primary cancer treatment.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Institut Català d'Oncologia

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Cristian Ochoa, PhD · Institut Català d'Oncologia, L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain, 08908

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

DOUBLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

85 Years

Sex

FEMALE

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2021-06-21

Primary Completion

2023-07-30

Completion

2023-07-30

Countries

• Spain

Study Locations