Prostate Cancer
Your patient used 6 pads yesterday. His chart says 'urinary function improving.'
Prostate cancer generates daily symptom data across urinary, sexual, hormonal, and pain domains — yet monitoring relies on clinic visits months apart and EPIC-26 questionnaires that compress weeks of lived experience into retrospective scores. The 3-pad day that felt like a victory, the hot flash that soaked the sheets at 2am, the PSA result that consumed a week of dread — none of it reaches the chart. Forma captures this continuous signal.
Forecast
Based on prior Topics logging
Topics
How it works
15 seconds of speech. 25 data points.
Forma turns each patient into a continuous data stream. By voice or text, patients log daily pad counts, urinary episodes, hot flash frequency and severity, PSA results with anxiety scoring, bone pain location and intensity, sexual function changes, fatigue levels, and cognitive fog in under a minute. No forms, no recall bias — and voice is essential because many of these symptoms are ones men won't write down but will say out loud. The result is a structured, longitudinal dataset across every prostate cancer domain — pad count trajectories paired with activity levels, ADT side effects correlated with treatment timing, and PSA anxiety quantified alongside the numbers themselves.
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Forecast
Based on prior Topics logging
Topics
Structured, coded, longitudinal
- Timing
- Infusion time:2:00 PM yesterdayNausea onset:8:00 PM
- Severity
- Nausea symptom:PresentNausea severity:6/10Emesis count:2 episodes
- Actions
- Treatment:ChemotherapyCycle number:3rd infusionAnti-emetic:ZofranAnti-emetic dose:8 mg
- Outcome
- Appetite:Absent
From data to insights
What the data reveals
Daily voice logs compound into actionable insights — for patients managing their condition and for researchers running studies.
For Patients
Is my continence actually recovering?
Your pad count dropped from 5 to 3 over 3 weeks — on track for your surgery type. Setback days (golf day 6, lifting day 18) spiked pads but your baseline keeps dropping. You held a cough on day 13 — that's pelvic floor strength returning. At this rate, you should reach 1–2 pads by week 12.
Daily pad count
Should I worry about this PSA?
Your PSA is 0.04 — well below the 0.2 threshold for biochemical recurrence. Your anxiety score was 8/10 the day you got results but dropped to 3/10 by day 5. This pattern has repeated each PSA cycle. Over 3 tests your PSA has been 0.06 → 0.05 → 0.04 — a downward trend.
PSA history
What activities trigger leaks?
Sneezing caused 62% of your stress incontinence episodes. Golf (sustained walking + twisting) triggered leakthrough on your first attempt but not the second — your endurance is improving. Heavy lifting remains a trigger. Kegel consistency correlates with better days: your 3-pad days all followed 3+ Kegel sets.
Leak triggers
Summarize my recovery for the urologist.
Week 6–10 post-prostatectomy. Pad count: 5 → 3 average. Best day: 3 pads with golf completion (day 21). Worst: 7 pads after first golf attempt (day 6). PSA 0.04 — stable. Erectile function: absent but anxiety decreasing. Pelvic floor PT progressing — cough control achieved day 13. Sleeping through night by day 25.
For Researchers
What is the real post-prostatectomy continence trajectory?
Across 67 radical prostatectomy patients, daily pad count shows a non-linear recovery curve: rapid improvement weeks 4–8, plateau weeks 8–12, then slow gains to month 6. 78% reach ≤2 pads by week 12. Daily data detects stalled recovery 3 weeks earlier than biweekly clinic assessments — enabling earlier pelvic floor intervention.
Recovery curve
Trend
How prevalent is PSA anxiety and what drives it?
87% of surveillance patients report anxiety scores ≥5/10 on PSA result days, even with favorable values. Anxiety duration averages 4.2 days per PSA cycle. Portal-checking behavior (>3 checks/day) correlates with higher anxiety (r=0.62). Voice-logged PSA anxiety is 2.4x higher than paper-reported — men disclose more by voice.
PSA anxiety cycle
Trend
What ADT side effects go unreported?
Nocturnal hot flashes average 2.1/night in ADT patients — 73% unreported at clinic visits. Cognitive fog affects 64% of patients daily but only 12% mention it to their oncologist. Sexual function logging by voice captures 3.8x more data than questionnaires. Body composition concerns are logged by 58% of patients but discussed at 8% of visits.
Unreported symptoms
Trend
Can daily data improve EPIC-26 endpoints?
Daily pad counts correlate r=0.89 with EPIC-26 urinary domain but detect clinically meaningful change 18 days earlier. A daily 3-domain composite (urinary + pain + vitality) achieves SRM 0.94 vs. EPIC-26's 0.62 for treatment response. Daily capture eliminates the 40% recall bias documented in retrospective PROs.
Endpoint sensitivity
Trend
Week 6 post-op. Used 5 pads today. Leaked twice walking to the car. Started Kegel exercises — physical therapist showed me this morning.
PSA came back at 0.04. Doctor says it's excellent. I know I should be relieved but I just keep checking the patient portal.
Only 4 pads — best day yet. Sneezed and leaked at lunch but otherwise dry. Walked 20 minutes, no issues.
Tried to golf for the first time. Had to stop at hole 6 — leaked through pad and shorts. Embarrassing. Used 7 pads total today.
Linda and I tried again last night. Nothing. I know it's early but it's getting to me. Back to 5 pads.
Pelvic floor PT session. She said my control is actually improving — I just can't feel it yet. Did 3 sets of Kegels on the drive home.
3 pads today! Walked 30 minutes, no leaks. Even coughed and held it. Linda said she can see the difference.
Follow-up with urologist. He's pleased with recovery — said pad count trajectory is right on track. Mentioned penile rehab program.
Bad day — 6 pads. Lifted a box moving furniture and leaked heavily. Frustrated after the progress.
Played 9 holes of golf — made it through! Wore a heavier pad just in case but only used 3 pads total. Best day since surgery.
Averaging 3 pads a day now. Slept through the night without getting up. Still no erectile function but feeling less anxious about it.
Key insight
Over four weeks, Tom's daily logs reveal the post-prostatectomy recovery trajectory that biweekly visits cannot: a pad count dropping from 5 to a stable 3 by day 25, with the setbacks that matter — a golf attempt on day 6 that exposed stress incontinence under exertion, a lifting episode on day 18 that spiked pads back to 6, and the PSA anxiety on day 2 that persisted despite a favorable 0.04 result. By day 21, he completed 9 holes of golf — a functional milestone invisible to an EPIC-26 score.
See Prostate Cancer configured for your study
See Forma configured for Prostate Cancer