Assessment of Data Usage of Cancer e-Interventions (ADUCI) Framework for Health App Use of Cancer Patients and Their Caregivers: Framework Development Study
Related Experiment Video
Updated: Dec 9, 2025
Digital Home-Monitoring of Patients after Kidney Transplantation: The MACCS Platform
Published on: April 12, 2021
Natalie Heynsbergh1, Seung Chul Eric O1, Patricia M Livingston1
1Faculty of Health, Deakin University, Geelong, Australia.
Background:
Multimedia interventions can provide a cost-effective solution to public health needs; however, user engagement is low. Multimedia use within specific populations such as those affected by cancer differs from that of the general population. To our knowledge, there are no frameworks on how to accurately assess usage within this population to ensure that interventions are appropriate for the end users. Therefore, a framework was developed to improve the accuracy of determining data usage. Formative work included creating a data usage framework during target audience testing for smartphone app development and analysis in a pilot study.
Objective:
The purpose of this study was to develop a framework for assessing smartphone app usage among people living with cancer and their caregivers.
Methods:
The frequency and duration of use were compared based on manual data extraction from two previous studies and the newly developed Assessment of Data Usage of Cancer e-Interventions (ADUCI) Framework.
Results:
Manual extraction demonstrated that 279 logins occurred compared with 241 when the ADUCI Framework was applied. The frequency of use in each section of the app also decreased when the ADUCI Framework was used. The total duration of use was 91,256 seconds (25.3 hours) compared with 53,074 seconds (14.7 hours) when using the ADUCI Framework. The ADUCI Framework identified 38 logins with no navigation, and there were 15 discrepancies in the data where time on a specific page of the app exceeded the login time. Practice recommendations to improve user engagement and capturing usage data include tracking data use in external websites, having a login function on apps, creating a five-star page rating functionality, using the ADUCI Framework to thoroughly clean usage data, and validating the Framework between expected and observed use.
Conclusions:
Applying the ADUCI Framework may eliminate errors and allow for more accurate analysis of usage data in e-research projects. The Framework can also improve the process of capturing usage data by providing a guide for usage data analysis to facilitate evidence-based assessment of user engagement with apps.
Related Concept Videos
01:21Cancer Survival Analysis
02:59Cancer Prevention
Some...
02:50Combination Therapies and Personalized Medicine
The combination of the drug acetazolamide and sulforaphane is a good example of combination therapy to treat cancer. The cells in the interior of a large tumor often die due to the hypoxic and...
02:49Cancer Therapies
However, cancer treatments can pose several challenges, as therapies used to kill cancer cells are generally also toxic to normal cells. Moreover, cancer cells mutate rapidly and can develop resistance to chemical agents or radiation therapy. Besides, all types of cancer cells may not respond to the same therapy. Some cancer cells respond to one...
01:27Nursing Ethical Principles II
Consider the following scenario, which illustrates how these principles are applied in the care of Mr. John, a fifty-year-old teacher diagnosed with metastatic liver cancer.
Initially, Mr. John's...
02:53Adaptive Mechanisms in Cancer Cells
Some of the advantages that cancer cells have on normal cells include - enhanced ability to divide without terminally differentiating, induce new blood vessel formation,...