Interactive Wellness Software for Adult Cancer Patients

As cancer treatments improve, the view that the illness is "chronic" rather than "terminal" isbecoming widespread. Under this new paradigm, caregivers have an increasing obligation to helppatients and their families learn how to live with the illness. While attention is given to "quality of life"as a clinical trial endpoint, development of innovative approaches to measuring and enhancing qualityof life in cancer patients is needed. This research will assess the technical feasibility of developing aninteractive, knowledge-based expert system for enhancing communication regarding life satisfactionissues among adult cancer patients and their caregivers. The purpose of the software is to improve thequality of that communication and to thereby improve conditions affecting the patient's satisfaction withlife, such as functional capacity, self-perception of wellness, and symptoms of disease or treatment.Existing tools for evaluation of quality of life will be reviewed. Commonly-accepted interventions to lossof life satisfaction will be identified. Criteria will be established for initiation of direct communicationbetween a patient and his/her caregivers. Object-oriented programming techniques will be used toprepare high- and low-level software design documentation. A software prototype will be constructedand subjected to alpha testing.