BrainWear 2 aims to explore the potential benefits of various digital tools for patients with brain tumours and their caregivers. Each participant will be asked to use a wearable smartwatch and to complete some quality-of-life assessments on their mobile devices. We will then see how those measures change over time and how they relate to factors such as treatment and changes on MRI in patients. We will also collect similar data from caregivers for these patients, so we can understand how changes in patients affect caregiver activity and quality of life.
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Due to the way we are running the study, it will be open to patients from across the UK, not just those treated at a recruiting centre. We aim to show whether we can track changes in patients' symptoms and feed that back to the clinical teams promptly. This is an essential stepping stone in our eventual aim, which is to use wearables to detect whether patients are getting worse before they become so unwell that they need hospitalisation. We may also add other digital technologies as these become available.
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Our main aim is to assess whether people are willing to use these tools, and whether they predict patients becoming less well. Our secondary aim is to see whether we can feed this information back within a reasonable timeframe, to see what would stop us using these tools routinely and see how well we can enrol patients from other centres.
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We previously ran the BrainWear and BrainApp clinical trials. Both trials explored the use of wearables and mobile apps in brain tumour patients and demonstrated that they could be used to collect information; however, they also identified some challenges. Drawing on the knowledge and insights gained from our earlier trials, we designed and developed the BrainWear 2 clinical study in close collaboration with patients and caregivers.
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The trial is not yet open; once it is open, we will provide information on how patients can enrol here.
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The trial is funded by Brain Tumour Research.
