Kudos to Jackie Vaughn and her advisors for the submission of her NIH NRSA F31 application entitled: "Technology-mediated Symptom Management in Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplant Care." This proposal requests funds for a three-year period with a start date of July 1, 2018. 

Children requiring blood and marrow transplants for malignant and nonmalignant diseases are medically fragile and highly vulnerable to significant distressful symptoms such as profound fatigue, pain, nausea, vomiting, and sleep disturbances. Patient and parent symptom management is integral to successful elimination, prevention, or treatment of symptoms. Use of meaningful real-time data would facilitate symptom management for patients and parents and facilitate better understanding of symptom characteristics and symptom clusters, the development of strategies to improve health outcomes, and the delivery of personalized care interventions when and where they are most needed.

This exploratory mixed methods study will examine the feasibility of using mHealth technologies to facilitate symptom management for PBMT patients and caregivers. It will also explore the feasibility of using real-time data to identify phenotypical expressions and to discover potential biomarkers in order to create interventions to better manage, eliminate, or prevent PBMT symptoms and thereby promote better health outcomes.