Description:
Abstract Background: In breast oncology, the increasing number of oral drug therapies pose great challenges for patient management. Numerous studies demonstrate that well-informed patients develop higher confidence in their treatment and a greater sense of disease control, resulting in increased adherence and persistence as well as potentially better outcome. Patients need knowledge, skills and confidence to actively participate in their own care. Moreover, such skills also contribute to reduction of planned and unplanned visits and of accompanying a time expenditure of the practice staff, thus lowering the costs of the whole treatment. Enhanced quality of life also affects financial resources by reducing sick leaves at work. The electronic Patient Reported Outcome (ePRO) tool CANKADO is designed to help oncologists to bridge the gap between good, personalized care and a time and resource-saving treatment for cancer patients. CANKADO helps patients and their physicians regarding therapy management by a standardized documentation procedure and, if needed, direct feedback to patients by the integrated Pro-React system. Methods: Aim of GERA is to assess the economic impact of an ePRO tool in breast cancer care. It is a prospective, single arm, non-interventional trial, based on questionnaires that answered by patients via the CANKADO Patient App. All patients undergoing systemic therapy for breast cancer with access to CANKADO will be included in the evaluation. This study will take place in 10 German centers and 337 patients will be included in the study. The enrollment phase of patients will last 6 months, while the individual patient observation and accompaniment phase through CANKADO will continue for 3 months. Primary objective is to gain knowledge on the health economic impact of CANKADO resource utilization in breast cancer care including the evaluation of physicians’ time and patient experience. As secondary objectives, exploratory analysis of all collected information is planned. This includes the socio-demographic patient information, clinical characteristics, quality-of life and patient documentation behavior. Results: The GERA trial is ongoing. Results will be presented at the conference. Conflict of interest: None declared Citation Format: Tanja Eggersmann, Christoph Riese, Claudia Wenzel, Timo Schinkoethe, Tom Degenhardt, Rachel Wuerstlein, Nadia Harbeck, Manfred Welslau. GERA: A health economic trial to analyze the impact of ehealth in breast cancer care [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2019 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2019 Dec 10-14; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2020;80(4 Suppl):Abstract nr OT3-14-01.