Introduction of a digital care companion to facilitate patient reported outcome measures and breast care nurse-led survivorship

As part of the Breast Cancer Survivorship program in the Royal Melbourne Hospital (RMH), a new electronic platform, Care Companion was designed to facilitate resource access, appointments and monitoring of breast cancer patients using patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs). This study aims to assess patient uptake of PROMs, completion rates, patient acceptance and the ability to identify and respond to areas of unmet need. Secondary aims included describing patient-reported outcomes. The Care Companion was designed by the RMH electronic medical record (EMR) team, breast care nurses, surgeons and consumers. This platform integrates and distributes electronic PROMs with automated reminders, allows real-time clinician access to responses, and triages patients based on symptom severity prior to clinic. This prospective study evaluates women with breast cancer 6–12 months following completion of their treatment between September 2022 and March 2024. Patients were invited to complete the three PROMs on Care Companion 4 weeks prior to the breast nurse clinic. Of the 133 patients invited to the Nurse-led Clinic, 47 (35.3%) completed pre-clinic PROMs and attended. Completion rates for the SCST, FACT-B + 4, and MRS were 98%, 52%, and 58%, respectively. From a subset comprising 10% of patients, 100% reported satisfaction with the program and would recommend the Care Companion breast survivorship program. 89% of respondents felt able to complete the tasks, felt actively involved, found the Care Companion easy to use and were comfortable using devices. This is the first Australian study to evaluate the integration of EMR-linked PROMs within a nurse-led breast cancer survivorship clinic. This pilot study has demonstrated that Care Companion is a user-friendly electronic tool and addressed a critical gap in digitally enabled survivorship care models. However, further refinement is required to improve patient engagement and fully realise the potential of digital survivorship care models.