Connecting Audio and Radio Sensing Systems to Improve Care at Home

Colorectal Cancer Clinical Trial

— AURA  

Official title:

Development and Pilot Testing of AURA

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Recruiting

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT05344950
• Other study ID #: LCCC2123
• Status: Recruiting
• Start date: March 21, 2022
• Est. completion date: July 2025

Study information

• Verified date: June 2024
• Source: UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center
• Contact: Karl Shieh, MHS
• Phone: 919-966-3119
• Email: kshieh12[@]email.unc.edu
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Study type: Observational

Clinical Trial Summary

This study aims to assess the usability and feasibility of the innovative Audio + Radio (AURA) system in enhancing personalized supportive care for cancer patients and caregivers during the post-ostomy care transition.

Description:

The investigators will assign 30 cancer patients with newly created ostomies for cancer treatment with curative intent and their primary caregivers to the AURA or usual care groups (30 patient-caregiver dyads, a total of 60 individuals). AURA is defined as a system that connects audio-based voice assistant devices with radiofrequency (RF) sensing technology to gather relevant patient information automatically, interactively, and with context-awareness and to store a patient's health records that otherwise had to be measured and entered manually into an electronic system. The users of this system will be the entire care team, consisting of the patient and their family members as well as the caregivers and healthcare providers at remote sites. The investigators will conduct pre- and post-assessments of quality of life (QOL) and patient-reported outcomes (PRO, symptoms) at baseline upon enrollment and 2 months later. If results indicate that the pilot trial is feasible, the investigators will design and conduct a definitive trial to examine the efficacy of AURA, a potentially scalable intervention that can be disseminated through oncology clinics nationwide to enhance post-treatment care for cancer patients with ostomies who transition from hospital professional care to self-management at home and their caregivers.

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Recruiting
• Enrollment: 60
• Est. completion date: July 2025
• Est. primary completion date: April 30, 2025
• Accepts healthy volunteers: No
• Gender: All
• Age group: 18 Years to 99 Years

Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria

Phase I: The investigators will only be recruiting patients for this phase

Patients must:

• have been surgically treated for colorectal or bladder cancer with curative intent;

• have had an ostomy with curative intent for at least 90 days;

• be able to read and speak English;

• be 18 years or older;

Phase II: The investigators will be recruiting patients and caregivers as a dyad for this phase

• Patients must:

• have been surgically treated for colorectal or bladder cancer with curative intent;

• be within one month of hospital discharge of a newly created ostomy with curative intent;

• be able to read and speak English;

• be 18 years or older;

• have a caregiver who is willing to participate in the study;

• Caregivers must:

• be 18 years or older;

• be able to read and speak English;

• be identified as the primary caregiver by the patient;

• have not themselves been diagnosed with cancer or received cancer treatment during the study (to ensure that patients and caregivers focus their efforts on care of the patient).

Exclusion Criteria

Patients and their caregivers will be excluded if they:

• are unable to read, speak, or understand English;

• have more than one type of ostomy;

• have other cancer diagnosis (excluding non-melanomatous skin cancer); or

• have cognitive impairment (assessed by the Short Portable Mental Status Questionnaire).

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Bladder Cancer
• Cervical Cancer
• Colorectal Cancer
• Ovarian Cancer
• Uterine Cancer
• Uterine Neoplasms

Intervention

Behavioral:
• Audio + Radio (AURA)
Participants will receive personalized self-care information and guidance based on their symptoms and signs of complications (e.g., skin infection, fatigue) from interacting with our voice assistant device, connected to a system that integrating the PRO (e.g., fatigue) and objective data from passive RF sensing to provide continuous monitoring of patients' symptoms and complications after they are discharged home. AURA will triage patient care based on the monitoring data that indicate the severity of their symptoms and complications. Patients and caregivers will self-monitor and manage at home for mild and moderate symptoms but be referred to professionals (e.g., wound and stoma nurse) when the patient experiences severe symptoms or significantly worsened symptoms.

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
United States	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	Chapel Hill	North Carolina

Sponsors (3)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center	National Library of Medicine (NLM), U.S. National Science Foundation

Country where clinical trial is conducted

United States, 

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Primary	Recruitment Rate	Recruitment rate will be assessed by the percentage of potentially eligible participants who have consented to participate in the study	from study launching to ending, about 1 year
Primary	Enrollment rate	Enrollment rate will be assessed by the percentage of potentially eligible participants who have completed the baseline survey.	after T1 (baseline survey)
Primary	Retention rate	Retention rate will be assessed by the percentage of enrolled participants who have completed the 30-day followup survey at the end of the study period.	after T2 (1-month followup survey)
Primary	Satisfaction with the AURA system	Satisfaction with the AURA system will be assessed by the 9-item Participant Satisfaction Scale measuring the level of program satisfaction ranging from 1=not satisfied to 5=extremely satisfied. Higher total score indicates greater program satisfaction.	after T2 (1-month followup survey)
Primary	Perceived ease of use of the PRISMS program	Perceived ease of use of the AURA system will be assessed by the 23-item Usability Scale measuring the ease of use in three aspects: general, content, and navigation. The scales range from 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree. Higher total score indicates greater ease of use.	after T2 (1-month followup survey)
Secondary	Change of Quality of Life (QOL)	Quality of Life (QoL) will be assessed using the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy General Scale (FACT-G) v.4, a 27-item measure yielding total score and scores for physical, social/family, emotional, and functional well-being of demonstrated reliability, validity, and sensitivity to change. FACT-G consists of 4 subscales: physical well-being (PWB), functional well-being (FWB), emotional well-being (EWB) and social well-being (SWB). Scores on the four subscales are summed to produce a total score ranging from 0 to 108 with higher scores indicating better quality of life. Change in the FACT-G scores from T1 (baseline survey) to T2 (2-month followup survey) will be calculated.	T1 (baseline survey) and T2 (1-month followup survey)