Oxford tools capture patient experience of cancer immunotherapy
New patient-reported outcome measures developed at the University of Oxford provide insight into quality of life and treatment burden for people receiving cancer immunotherapy.
Publication date: 21 September 2026
Immunotherapy has transformed the treatment landscape for many cancers, but understanding its impact requires more than measuring clinical response. The effects of treatment on patients’ quality of life, emotional wellbeing and everyday activities are also important considerations for clinical research and care.
Researchers at the University of Oxford have developed two complementary patient-reported outcome measures to capture these experiences in adults receiving immunotherapy for cancer.
The Oxford Cancer Immunotherapy – Quality of Life (OxCI-QoL) is a 19-item measure assessing quality of life across three domains: living a normal life, emotional wellbeing, and immuno-oncology (IO) side effects and symptoms. Designed to take approximately three minutes to complete, it provides a targeted way to understand the wider impact of cancer immunotherapy from the patient perspective.
Its companion measure, the Oxford Cancer Immunotherapy – Burden of Treatment (OxCI-BT), is a nine-item measure focused on a single domain: burden of treatment. It captures how the demands of immunotherapy can affect patients’ everyday lives and takes approximately two minutes to complete.
The measures were developed through research into the outcomes, burdens and experiences of patients receiving immunotherapy for cancer. The research was undertaken by Rebecca Wiltshire from Oxford’s Department of Oncology, together with Professor Michele Peters from the Nuffield Department of Population Health and Professor Mark Middleton, Head of the Department of Oncology.
Patients were involved throughout the development process. In-depth qualitative interviews with people receiving, or who had recently received, immunotherapy helped inform the content of the measures. Cognitive interviews and expert input were then used to refine them. The researchers also assessed how suitable the measures were for translation into other languages and cultural settings, before testing them with patients receiving immunotherapy.
Together, OxCI-QoL and OxCI-BT enable researchers and organisations to distinguish between the broader impact on quality of life and the burden of treatment itself, supporting the generation of patient-centred evidence as the use of immunotherapy continues to evolve in cancer care.