Using a mobile application to promote physical activity after cancer

A group of researcher’s led by Dr Abi Fisher (UCL Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care) and Anna Roberts who is currently completing her PhD at UCL, with Dr Henry Potts from the UCL Institute of Health Informatics and further colleagues have recently successfully been awarded a £620,000 grant from Yorkshire Cancer Research. This will fund a four year project; “APPROACH: Using a mobile application to promote physical activity after cancer” starting in April 2019.

People affected by cancer who take part in physical activity have a reduced risk of all-cause and cancer-specific mortality, cancer recurrence, treatment side effects, other late effects and comorbidities such as cardiovascular disease. This project will explore whether a physical activity app can improve cancer-related outcomes. The project will comprise an initial pilot, a randomised controlled trial of intervention with the app to determine the success of the trial procedures and recruitment of people diagnosed with breast, prostate or colorectal cancers in routine care. Next, a fully-powered trial will be conducted to explore whether the app can improve physical activity participation or other cancer-relevant outcomes such as quality of life, fatigue, pain and sleep quality.