ideasIdea
A survivorship passport app for adolescent and young adult survivors
Young survivors will live sixty more years and will change doctors many times. A phone app holding their treatment history, risks and screening reminders would travel with them for life.
Adolescent and young adult survivors are the group most likely to be lost to follow-up and to face late effects for the longest. The European SurPass (Survivorship Passport) initiative has developed a standardised electronic passport with treatment summary and individualised follow-up recommendations; adoption is uneven. A patient-held app version with reminders, exposure-based risk explanations, and a shareable summary would improve long-term adherence.
Hypothesis
Survivors using the passport app will show at least 30% higher adherence to recommended long-term surveillance at five years than those with a paper summary or none.
Rationale
Patient-held records improve engagement when the patient is the constant across many providers; young people are the population most reachable through a phone.
What would test it
A randomised trial in 1,000 AYA survivors at end of treatment with surveillance adherence, self-reported knowledge of risks, and health-service contact as endpoints.
Maturity
early clinical
Who has to act
patients
Cost to try
Small (under $1M)
Years to first evidence
2
Bottlenecks it attacks
- Survivorship and late effects are neglected · Tens of millions of people live after cancer with heart damage, infertility, second cancers and fear, and few services.
- Patients lack understanding, navigation and agency · Most patients cannot understand their options, find trials, or push back, so decisions are made for them.