Periodic Reporting for period 3 - iManageCancer (iManageCancer - Empowering patients and strengthening self-management in cancer diseases)
Período documentado: 2017-08-01 hasta 2018-07-31
Significant improvements due to cancer research have led to more cancer patients being cured, and very many more enabled to live with their condition. The disease is now frequently managed as a chronic illness requiring long-term surveillance and, in some cases, maintenance treatment. As a chronic illness, however, there is an urgent need for patients and families to manage their own care. The iManageCancer project supports this challenge and provides a cancer disease self-management platform designed according to the specific needs of patients and focusing on their wellbeing. iManageCancer hinges on the concept of patient empowerment, encouraging people with cancer to actively manage their disease through novel health apps and secure eHealth services, which actively help them to better understand their disease, the implications of the options they have available and give better wellbeing to them and their families.
The iManageCancer Platform consists of the applications iPHR, MyHealthAvatar for iManageCancer, iManageMyHealth, iSupportMyPatients as well as the Game for Kids and the Game for Adults. They are all connected to a backbone of services comprising of a semantic data store, the Care Flow Engine with the Model Repository, and an authentication service.
iPHR, an open source personal health record available online, enables an individual to manage and share a digital copy of his/her health and contains a variety of applications, such as an e-diary, novel psycho-emotional health assessment instruments, a personal health information recommender, and a decision aid for prostate cancer patients.
MyHealthAvatar for iManageCancer supports patients with cancer to optimize their lifestyle and to recover from cancer treatment, through an integrated digital representation of the personal health status.
The iManageMyHealth app supports users in managing their drugs and their interactions. It assists in managing and understanding paper based health documents, and in recording and overviewing specific vital signs and laboratory parameters. Specific management services of the Care Flow Engine, record pain and fatigue and offer advices and links to public information resources.
iSupportMyPatients is an informative app intended for physicians. This app offers to health professionals access to the disease management services of the Care Flow Engine. It includes monitoring serious side effects of chemotherapies, leveraging a predictive risk model for febrile neutropenia, and obtaining advice regarding the optimal therapy. This prognostic model, implementing a pre-treatment model, resulted from machine learning research in the project on existing cancer data from chemotherapy patients in the.
The Serious Game for Adults promotes a healthier lifestyle, disease management and encourages patients to manage their disease. The game puts the users in the role of an authority figure who manages a town, trying to balance residents’ resources and time to face cancer related lifestyle problems.
The Serious Game for Kids is a classical shooter game on cancer cells with strong social aspects. It can also be played by family members and friends to give the child support in form of extra weapons and shields to fight the cancer.
The project conducted three pilots, one for adult breast cancer patients, one for prostate cancer patients, and one for cancer suffering children and their parents to assess the value of the iManageCancer Platform. The pilot for kids managed to recruit 15 parents and their children whereas the pilots for adults managed to recruit 135 patients. Results showed mixed evidences on the improvements for the patient empowerment due to lack of time and treatment induced stress and psychological problems. Nevertheless coping with cancer, mood and cancer resilience were improved for the trial arm using the platform. In addition, users recognized the usability and the usefulness of the developed platform. With these results, the final milestone (MS4) of the project is achieved.
Project results attracted more than 75K visitors in the YouTube channel, more than 150K visitors per month, a special issue in a well-respected journal and 42 peer-reviewed scientific papers and articles whereas project results disseminated widely through multiple marketing campaigns. Finally multiple exploitation routes were explored for the 14 exploitable technological innovations identified both academic and commercial.