Harnessing consumer smartphone and wearable sensors for clinical cancer research

As smartphones and consumer wearable devices become more ubiquitous, there is a growing opportunity to capture rich mobile sensor data continuously, passively, and in real-world settings with minimal burden. In the context of cancer, changes in these passively sensed digital biomarkers may reflect meaningful variation in functional status, symptom burden, quality of life, and risk for adverse clinical outcomes. These data could enable real-time remote monitoring of patients between clinical encounters and more proactive, comprehensive, and personalized care. Over the past few years, small studies across a variety of cancer populations support the feasibility and potential clinical value of mobile sensors in oncology. Barriers to implementing mobile sensing in clinical oncology care include the challenges of managing and making sense of continuous sensor data, patient engagement issues, difficulty integrating sensor data into existing electronic health systems and clinical workflows, and ethical and privacy concerns. Multidisciplinary collaboration is needed to develop mobile sensing frameworks that overcome these barriers and that can be implemented at large-scale for remote monitoring of deteriorating health during or after cancer treatment or for promotion and tailoring of lifestyle or symptom management interventions. Leveraging digital technology has the potential to enrich scientific understanding of how cancer and its treatment affect patient lives, to use this understanding to offer more timely and personalized support to patients, and to improve clinical oncology outcomes.