Background: Childhood cancer survivors require long-term care and assistance navigating the healthcare system. E-tools designed for care coordination have been widely developed. E-tools can be expensive and require regular upkeep of technology and stored information. However, healthcare consumers’ and providers’ perceived acceptability of, and desire to use, these tools is understudied.
Aim: We aimed to assess the acceptability of e-tools among adult survivors of childhood cancer, parents of childhood cancer survivors and General Practitioners (GPs).
Method: We invited adult survivors of childhood cancer (16 years and older), parents of survivors (whose child was aged 25 years or younger), and GPs with at least one childhood cancer survivor patient to complete semi-structured interviews. We asked participants about perceived use of an e-tool to manage care, benefits of and barriers to use, concerns about using e-tools and desired features in an e-tool to manage survivorship care.
Results: We interviewed 36 survivors, 24 parents and 51 GPs. Among parents and survivors, e-tools were widely endorsed with high perceived uptake (83%). Commonly reported benefits included increased access to evidence-based information, personalised information on patients’ cancer history, easier information sharing with health professionals, and increased confidence in managing their survivorship care. E-tools were less acceptable among GPs and perceived uptake was lower (51%). GPs named more diverse barriers to using an e-tool and less benefits to its use, including demands on time, patient confidentiality concerns and possible technical errors. They acknowledged that e-tools catered to relocating patients and allowing information sharing.
Conclusions: E-tools are a welcome resource for healthcare consumers and may be valuable in encouraging self-managed care and aiding patient-practitioner communication. Consideration must be given to the feasibility of implementing e-tools in General Practice given the barriers which may impact on uptake. E-tools may be most effective as a patient-held, managed and shared resource.