iManageCancer - Empowering patients and strengthening self-management in cancer diseases

ended

Chronic cancer treatment places new demands on patients and families to manage their own care. The iManageCancer project will support this challenge and provide a cancer disease self-management platform designed according to the specific needs of patient groups and focusing on the wellbeing of the cancer patient with special emphasis on psycho-emotional evaluation and self-motivated goals. The platform will be centred in a Personal Health Record that will exploit recent advances on Health Avatars for the individual cancer patient surrounded by mHealth applications designed to encourage the patient, enhance clinician-patient communication, maximise compliance to therapy, inform about drug interactions, and contribute to the management of pain and other side-effects of cancer treatment. The Health Avatar PHR will regularly monitor the psycho-emotional status of the patient and will periodically record the everyday life experiences of the cancer patient with respect to the therapy side effects, while different groups of patients and their families will share information through diaries and clinicians are provided with clinical information. The PHR will help assess adherence to therapy, physiological and psychological status while the platform will recommend targeted informative applications and serious games according to the disease type and psycho-emotional status of the patients in order to promote a positive and healthier psycho-emotional state. The disease management platform will be further complemented by an integrated expert system with formal self-management models that will be oriented to decision support, the management of side-effects, adherence to therapy and guidance for patients including drug dose self-adjustments. The iManageCancer platform will be designed on clinical evidence and in close collaboration of clinical experts, IT specialists and patients and will be assessed in clinical pilots with adult and paediatric cancer patients.