Role of smartphone devices in precision oncology

To improve the care for cancer patients, personalized treatment including monitoring and managing Quality of life (QoL) data collection of patients in his/her home environment, its integration and its analysis is necessary. Advanced technologies have been used to develop smartphone devices to support cancer patients and clinicians by integrating all patient-relevant data, helping with Patient Reported Outcomes (PRO), side effect management, appointments, and nutritional support.

In this review the role and challenges of using smartphone applications for precision oncology is discussed.

The methodology section includes the data collection, data integration and predictive modelling approaches. The design, development and evaluation of (AI/ML) algorithms of these apps need intended purpose of these algorithms, description of used mepthods, validity and appropriateness of the datasets, design of the algorithms, evaluation, implementation of these (AI/ML) algorithms and post treatment monitoring.

Though Artificial intelligence (AI) based results showed higher diagnostic classification accuracy in most of the results, the advancement of these mobile apps technologies has a few limitations.

ML techniques and DL are used to discover novel biomarkers for early detection and diagnostics, and AI are used to accelerate drug discovery, exploit biomarkers to accurately match patients to clinical trials, and personalize cancer therapy based only on patient's own data. AI based smartphone apps cannot be treated as autonomous rather used as an integrative tool for patient-relevant data, PRO, side effect management, appointments, nutritional support, emotional and social support, severity of pain detection and correct diagnosis at higher level. It should encourage the clinicians and care givers to support and establish patient-physician relationships with the help of these apps.