Real-Time Text Tool Tracks Quality of Life in Myeloma Care

At the 2025 ASH Annual Meeting, Dr. James Berenson, of the Berenson Cancer Center, presented new findings on a text-based platform called measurable quality of life (MQOL). He explained that the goal was to show how MQOL can give physicians real-time insight into how patients with myeloma are feeling between visits, helping clinicians act faster to support quality of life.

Berenson said MQOL allowed his team to engage 58 patients daily for the first month of a three-month study, asking about common symptoms such as bone pain, tiredness and sleep issues. He noted that 85% of patients completed the assessments — far higher than typical participation in PRO studies — because it took under three minutes. He added that MQOL helped him spot concerning symptoms within 24 hours and intervene quickly, leading to better outcomes, and hopes this early study encourages wider use of real-time quality-of-life tracking.

Transcript

What will you be presenting on today?

Consistent with our philosophy regarding the importance of quality of life, we are presenting today at ASH a paper using a brand-new platform to assess PRO, or patient-related outcomes, called measurable quality of life, or MQOL. This is a text-based platform that allows easy and quick access by patients to communicate data to me, the physician, on a much more frequent basis to learn what's going on with them, both importantly to pick up on any clinically significant problems and act on them much more rapidly so they don't come out of hand. As I say, read between the notes or clinic notes. We're engaging them every day, and it also gives a much more accurate assessment of what a patient goes through. When companies are developing drugs, they really know the truth as opposed to, oh, they're fine, they're not really fine. You're not picking up on these side effects.

In this study, we enrolled 58 patients, and we followed them for three months, and we engaged them on a daily basis for the first month with this text-based platform, asking a series of questions about common symptoms in myeloma, like bone pain and tiredness and problems sleeping — those kinds of things — and quality of life. And then we also looked at a number of what's 10 measurements of what's called quality-of-life assessments. And in that study, we found that 85% of patients got on board and completed the assessment. That's unheard of. These studies are usually 15 to 20%, and these were even patients who were doing well who said, this is easy, I'm going to do it. It took less than three minutes, easy to get the data, and within 24 hours if something's gone wrong — boom — I'm on with the patient, and I'm able to change it rapidly and affect a more positive outcome for the patient.

So this is the first such study and hopefully will lead to many others, which will allow a more real-time assessment of what really happens to your patient and allow me to affect a better outcome because I'm able to act on things that are clinically significant that I would have never seen because I wasn't able to read between the notes. But now we can.

Reference

1. “Transforming patient outcomes in multiple myeloma through real-time, text-based monitoring of symptoms and quality of life: Results from the MQOL feasibility study” by Dr. James Berenson, Oral Abstract Session, ASH Annual Meeting, presented Dec. 6, 2025

Transcript has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

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