Using m-health apps in oncology : A review from 2015 to 2022

The increased use of smartphones and the COVID-19 pandemic directly influenced the development of remote tools in several areas. In the context of oncology, it was no different, as several studies address health care or services related to mobile devices. Apps aimed at the medical field (m-health) focus directly on monitoring symptoms and improving interaction between health professionals and patients, combined with the convenience of smartphones. In this context, this work aims to address recent studies on the use of m-health in the clinical practice of oncological diseases and report the characteristics of the apps involved. For this, a review of m-health focused on oncology was conducted using the PubMed and Science Direct databases. The investigation was carried out using tools inherent in international databases and was limited to articles published between 2015 and 2022. In total, 34 articles were analyzed, with a higher frequency of publications between 2019 and 2022. The resources observed were patient follow-up, prevention of signs and symptoms, monitoring of treatment and aid in prognosis and diagnosis of patients. It is concluded that a close collaboration among patients, health professionals, and information technology professionals is necessary to optimize symptom recognition and improve patientprofessional communication. Although the pandemic has intensified the increase in the use of m-health, its use is expected to increase in the post-pandemic scenario, bearing in mind the changes in social dynamics and the growing dissemination of technologies.This work has been supported by Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal) for financial support through national funds FCT/MCTES (PIDDAC) to CeDRI (UIDB/05757/2020 and UIDP/05757/2020), SusTEC (LA/P/0007/2021) and NORTE-01-0247-FEDER-072598 iSafety: Intelligent system for occupational safety and wellbeing in the retail sector. Laíres A. Lima thanks the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), Portugal, for the Ph.D. Grant 2022.13393.BD.