Symptom self-report data: what we have learned in year one

For the last twelve months Daymark has captured structured symptom self-reports from every active patient on our panel. The dataset is small by cancer-research standards but unusually clean: same instrument, same cadence, same population.

Three patterns stand out. First, symptom severity peaks earlier in chemotherapy cycles than the textbook suggests, which has implications for when proactive outreach is most useful. Second, the gap between what a patient is willing to put in a structured form and what they will tell a nurse on the phone is large — but predictable. Third, family caregivers are an underused signal source, and they almost always respond when invited.

We are publishing the methodology and the de-identified aggregate data here so other teams can replicate the work. Reach out if you want to talk about the underlying instrument.