Background: The mobile health (mHealth) application encourages parents and pediatric patients to be involved in caring for their child's health condition by providing the ability to actively identify and manage chemotherapy-induced symptoms in their child. Several monitoring systems available today are diverse in features and system basis. This study aimed to develop and trial the Chemo Assists for Children (CAC) mHealth application for symptom management due to chemotherapy in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).
Methods: In this study, the development of the CAC application went through four phases. The initial phase was conducting a literature study for application content. The application design phase involved five experts in validating application content. In the implementation phase, the application was piloted on ten parents with ALL children undergoing chemotherapy at two teaching hospitals in Indonesia. According to the test results, the CAC application was improved at the evaluation stage. The data were obtained descriptively from the validation and application testing using the average and total item scores.
Results: Phase 1 obtained 17 reference sources in textbooks and research journal articles to design the mHealth application content. Phase 2 received the value of the content validity of all statements was 0.96, which means that the application material is declared valid. In phase 3, the average total usability test score was 4.28. Finally, an evaluation phase was applied continuously to produce an accurate, accessible, and appropriate application for users.
Conclusions: The CAC mHealth application developed can meet the needs of technology users to identify symptoms and manage symptoms due to chemotherapy in children with ALL. The CAC mHealth application can accommodate data not recorded at out-of-hospital care, increase the independence of symptom management, and improve communication between parents of children with ALL and health workers.