Development of a Patient-Centered Preference Tool for Patients With Hematologic Malignancies: Protocol for a Mixed...

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Patient-Centered Care
• Decision Science

Background:

• Novel therapies for hematologic malignancies improve survival but complicate treatment choice alignment with patient preferences.
• Previous paper-based discrete choice experiment (DCE) and best-worst scaling (BWS) instruments were developed to quantify patient preferences.
• Informing shared decision-making requires understanding patient preferences for treatment outcomes.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop an electronic health care tool (EHT) using DCE or BWS instruments to capture patient preferences for guiding clinical decisions.
• To evaluate the perceived usability, cognitive workload (CWL), and performance of electronic prototypes incorporating DCE and BWS instruments.
• To compare the usability, CWL, and performance of DCE versus BWS electronic prototypes.

Main Methods:

• Mixed methods study employing iterative co-design with healthy volunteers, patient-caregiver pairs, and health care workers.
• Qualitative data collection via think-aloud sessions and semistructured interviews for thematic analysis.
• Quantitative evaluation using validated assessments (PSSUQ, NASA-TLX, SEQ) for usability, CWL, and task performance (time, errors).

Main Results:

• Ethical approval obtained; DCE and BWS instruments integrated into the PRIME prototype (early-mid 2021).
• Heuristic evaluations completed (July 2021); recruitment for healthy volunteers (Aug-Sep 2021) and phase 3 (Jan-Sep 2022) underway.
• Phase 2 findings accepted for publication (Dec 2021); phase 3 data analysis expected completion (Nov 2022).

Conclusions:

• Findings will differentiate the usability, CWL, and performance of DCE and BWS electronic prototypes.
• Optimization of prototypes will lead to an EHT facilitating shared decision-making in clinical settings.
• Evaluation results will inform the development of clinically applicable EHTs for patients and healthcare providers.