My journey compass: a preliminary investigation of a mobile tool for cancer patients.

Health information management for cancer care is a challenging and personal process that changes over time based on one's needs, goals, and health status. While technologies supporting health information management appear promising, we do not fully understand how health information tools fit into patients? daily lives. To better understand the opportunities and usage barriers of these tools, we designed and deployed a mobile, tablet-based health management aid: My Journey Compass. After one month of use, we interviewed twelve breast cancer patients to investigate their initial patterns of adoption, adaptation, use and non-use. We found that developing a tool that was customizable, mobile, and integrated into the patients' healthcare system resulted in a set of surprising uses by breast cancer patients for a wide variety of tasks. Our study demonstrates the potential for health management tools to improve the cancer care experience and for HCI research to influence existing healthcare systems.