{"id":3685,"date":"2023-10-30T16:56:44","date_gmt":"2023-10-30T20:56:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/med.virginia.edu\/bht\/?p=3685"},"modified":"2023-10-30T16:58:14","modified_gmt":"2023-10-30T20:58:14","slug":"dr-phil-chow-wearable-devices-such-as-smartwatches-could-help-us-personalize-cancer-treatments-and-improve-patient-outcomes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/med.virginia.edu\/bht\/2023\/10\/30\/dr-phil-chow-wearable-devices-such-as-smartwatches-could-help-us-personalize-cancer-treatments-and-improve-patient-outcomes\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Phil Chow: Wearable devices such as smartwatches could help us personalize cancer treatments and improve patient outcomes"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Secret to Better Cancer Care\u00a0Could Already Be on Your Wrist (uvahealth.com)<\/a><\/p>\n

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October 30, 2023<\/span><\/p>\n

The Secret to Better Cancer Care\u00a0Could Already Be on Your Wrist<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\"A<\/p>\n

Wearable devices such as smartwatches could help us personalize cancer treatments and improve patient outcomes, School of Medicine researchers say.<\/em><\/p>\n

Your smartwatch could be the key to better, more personalized cancer care, UVA Cancer Center researchers suggest.<\/p>\n

A team of UVA Health researchers has demonstrated the potential of wearable and mobile devices such as smartwatches and smartphones to help doctors tailor treatments to the needs of individual patients. The scientists found that they could use wearable devices to predict patients\u2019 levels of cortisol, the insomnia and stress hormone. Results from their laboratory experiments suggest that patients with pancreatic cancer who have high cortisol levels from disrupted sleep will experience faster growth of their tumors; that suggests that doctors could leverage this information from patients\u2019 mobile devices to help at-risk patients keep their cortisol levels down and, in turn, slow their tumor growth.<\/p>\n

While the work is still in the early stages, the UVA scientists say their efforts demonstrate the tremendous potential of \u201cmobile sensing\u201d for improving and individualizing cancer care. As so, they have charted out an ambitious plan that would bring together experts in many different areas \u2013 from psychology to engineering\/data science to oncology \u2013 to capitalize on the untapped possibilities of devices that most of us already carry in our pockets or wear on our wrists.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur vision is that this could one day lead to individualized cancer treatment that is tailored to the behavioral health profile of the individual patient,\u201d said researcher Philip I. Chow, PhD, of the University of Virginia School of Medicine\u2019s Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences and UVA\u2019s Center for Behavioral Health and Technology. \u201cWe know that patients are diverse in terms of their mental and physical health. Things like insomnia and distress could be important factors in how quickly a patient\u2019s tumor grows and how resistant it is to cancer treatments. We\u2019re trying to advance a more precise model of care that takes into account a patient\u2019s health profile when making decisions about their cancer treatment in order to improve outcomes. It\u2019s a bit outside-the-box thinking, and to our knowledge nobody else is doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

TAPPING TECH TO IMPROVE CANCER CARE<\/h2>\n

In a new scientific paper, Chow and his collaborators, including UVA\u2019s Dan Gioeli, PhD, a cancer biologist and co-principal investigator on the research, argue there is \u201cstrong but unrealized\u00a0potential to harness people’s mobile sensing data to improve our understanding of their cellular and biologically based diseases.\u201d This, they say, has been made possible by recent breakthroughs in our ability to model cancer tumors.<\/p>\n

Data about patients\u2019 hormones from could be fed into such systems so that doctors could have unprecedented insights into an individual patient\u2019s disease and cancer progression, the researchers say. By using a system that models how tumor cells grow (called the tumor microenvironment system, or TMES), the UVA team revealed that pancreatic cancer cells grew much faster in people with high cortisol from disrupted sleep. But there are many other potential applications of the technology, from understanding how patients\u2019 behaviors affect their cancers to benefiting fundamental cancer research, the researchers say.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy bringing together different scientific disciplines, we can more effectively model cancer in the laboratory and then possibly learn, one, how a patient\u2019s cancer will respond to specific therapies and, two, how helping manage a patient\u2019s sleep or stress levels can impact that therapy,\u201d said Gioeli, of UVA\u2019s Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Cancer Biology.\u00a0\u201cIt is incredibly exciting to be working on a team of scientists with such diverse expertise to do something unique and potentially impactful for patients.\u201d<\/p>\n

The UVA researchers envision that one day soon patients might wear a smartwatch connected to an app on their phones that would securely transmit encrypted data to their health care providers. Artificial intelligence would estimate their hormone levels from their behavioral patterns, and those levels would be displayed in their electronic health records so that clinicians could leverage the information to make the best care decisions.<\/p>\n

\u201cContinuously monitoring patients\u2019 underlying hormone levels has immense potential for improving their care, given how impactful they are to cellular function and body systems,\u201d Chow said. \u201cThis work is the result of a collaboration across multiple disciplines, including mental and behavioral health, engineering, data science, medical oncology, surgical oncology and cancer biology. By combining our expertise, our aim is to advance cancer treatment that is more precise and tailored to the individual patient.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finding innovative ways to improve cancer care is a prime mission for UVA Cancer Center, one of only 54 cancer centers in the country awarded the prestigious \u201cComprehensive Cancer Center\u201d designation by the National Cancer Institute.\u00a0The designation<\/a>\u00a0recognizes elite cancer centers with the most outstanding cancer programs in the nation. Comprehensive Cancer Centers\u00a0must meet rigorous standards for innovative research and leading-edge clinical trials.<\/p>\n

FINDINGS PUBLISHED<\/h2>\n

The researchers have described their plan in the scientific journal\u00a0Internet Interventions<\/a>. The research team consisted of Chow,\u00a0Devin G. Roller, Mehdi\u00a0Boukhechba,\u00a0Kelly M.\u00a0Shaffer,\u00a0Lee M.\u00a0Ritterband,\u00a0Matthew J.\u00a0Reilley,\u00a0Tri M.\u00a0Le,\u00a0Paul R.\u00a0Kunk,\u00a0Todd W.\u00a0Bauer\u00a0and\u00a0Gioeli. Gioeli has equity in HemoShear Therapeutics, which holds the license for commercial use of the TMES.<\/p>\n

The research was supported by National Cancer Institute\u00a0Cancer Center Support Grant\u00a05P30CA044579-27.<\/p>\n

To keep up with the latest medical research news from UVA, subscribe to the\u00a0Making of Medicine<\/a>\u00a0blog.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Secret to Better Cancer Care\u00a0Could Already Be on Your Wrist (uvahealth.com) October 30, 2023 The Secret to Better Cancer Care\u00a0Could Already Be on Your Wrist Wearable devices such as smartwatches could help us personalize cancer treatments and improve patient outcomes, School of Medicine researchers say. Your smartwatch could be the key to better, more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1961,"featured_media":3686,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-the-news"],"acf":false,"yoast_head":"\nDr. Phil Chow: Wearable devices such as smartwatches could help us personalize cancer treatments and improve patient outcomes - Center for Behavioral Health and Technology<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/med.virginia.edu\/bht\/2023\/10\/30\/dr-phil-chow-wearable-devices-such-as-smartwatches-could-help-us-personalize-cancer-treatments-and-improve-patient-outcomes\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dr. Phil Chow: Wearable devices such as smartwatches could help us personalize cancer treatments and improve patient outcomes - Center for Behavioral Health and Technology\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Secret to Better Cancer Care\u00a0Could Already Be on Your Wrist (uvahealth.com) October 30, 2023 The Secret to Better Cancer Care\u00a0Could Already Be on Your Wrist Wearable devices such as smartwatches could help us personalize cancer treatments and improve patient outcomes, School of Medicine researchers say. 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