TOPIC 363: myCare2 - Supporting Caregivers and Caregiving

The myCare2 solution will be marketed to cancer care organizations and include three separate portals for cancer caregivers, patients and providers. The system will be mobile-enabled and support standards-based EHR integration. Primary myCare2 features include symptom assessment, communication with the care team, care plan dissemination, tailored education content for caregiving and for caregiver self-care, and peer/community support. The demands of caring for a cancer patient at home often result in a failure to meet caregivers' personal and emotional needs and place caregivers at high risk of experiencing a wide array of physical, mental and social issues. Our overarching goal is to develop and evaluate myCare2, a dual-focused caregiver support system that addresses the caregiving needs as well as the personal needs of a caregiver. The myCare2 solution will be marketed to cancer care organizations and include three separate portals for cancer caregivers, patients and providers. The system will be mobile-enabled and support standards-based EHR integration. Primary myCare2 features include symptom assessment, communication with the care team, care plan dissemination, tailored education content for caregiving and for caregiver self-care, and peer/community support. Our Phase I specific objectives are: 1) conduct a competitive analysis of features provided by other commercial and academic caregiver support solutions; 2) collect feedback from stakeholders on system features, perceived usefulness and potential barriers via focus groups; 3) develop the myCare2 prototype with a user-centric design process leveraging our prior work; and 4) conduct usability tests with cancer patients, caregivers, and providers, which we expect to demonstrate the usability and usefulness of our prototype.