O.10.2 - Development of an eHealth program to empower people with advanced cancer and their family caregivers: Presenter(s): Vincent Van Goethem, Ghent University/End-of-life Care Research Group, Belgium.

eEhealth programs are a promising way to support and empower people with advanced cancer and their family caregivers. An intervention that has been proven effective in decreasing distress and improving quality of life in patients and family caregivers is the FOCUS program, developed and tested in the USA. FOCUS has already been adapted to a face-to-face program named FOCUS+ which functioned as a base for development of the web-based iFOCUS program. The aim of this paper is to describe the translation from FOCUS+ to the self-managed web-based iFOCUS program and the challenges we encountered. Five teams were involved across seven steps of development; a research team, a web-development team, an international consortium, other audio-visual experts and potential end-users. We conducted user- and functional testing of program before implementing it in a Randomized Controlled Trial. We identified seven core features for the web-based program, i.e. psycho-educational character, based on the five FOCUS components, variation in pedagogic approach and tailoring, tailoring, facilitates dyadic communication, complementary to regular care and available outside the hospital in the language of the dyad. Both generic and project-specific challenges were encountered during development. User- and functional testing showed that the program functioned well and was acceptable to users. Minor changes needed to be made to the content, tailoring and program flow. The program is introduced to patient-caregiver dyads through interpersonal contact. Implications of research: Developing a self-managed dyadic eHealth program has many challenges which sometimes are related to project-specific requirements such as facilitating dyadic communication, but also to eHealth development in general such as estimating program development cost. Some pedagogic features are easier to incorporate in a face-to-face intervention due to the fluid nature of conversations. The program is currently being tested in a large-scale international randomized clinical trial. Preliminary results are promising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]