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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - iManageCancer (iManageCancer - Empowering patients and strengthening self-management in cancer diseases)

Teaser

Summary

iManageCancer teams serious games up with the latest in self-management technology to empower people living with cancer. In this project, 8 partners from 5 European countries are creating intelligent, fun new ways to let those with chronic illnesses manage their lives in a new way, all from their mobile phones.
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 will help them to better understand their disease, the implications of the options they have available and give better wellbeing to them and their families.

Work performed

While the project focused in the first year on the definition of the concept for cancer patient empowerment and on the design of the iManageCancer Platform with the provision of an initial vertical prototype of the system, the efforts in the following 18 months concentrated on the development of the various tools planned in the technological work packages and their integration in a holistic platform. Software development was driven by a close involvement of end users, in particular patients, through various activities.
An initial prototype of the iManageCancer Platform offering basic functionality was delivered in December 2016 followed by a first formal end user workshop. An important milestone (MS2) was achieved with this activity. The extended version of the integrated platform became available on July 2017 and was tested by 10 patients at home over a week.
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, all connected to a backbone of services comprising a data store with the personal health records, the Care Flow Engine with the Model Repository, which form the central decision support framework, and an authentication service. With the technical documentation of the system, the major milestone MS3 of the project is achieved.
iPHR enables an individual to own and manage and share a complete, secure, digital copy of his/her health and wellness information. iPHR contains a variety of applications like an eDiary, novel psycho-emotional health assessment instruments, a decision aid for consultation for prostate cancer, and a personal health information recommender.
MyHealthAvatar for iManageCancer is a solution to support patients with prostate cancer or breast cancer to optimize their lifestyle and to recover from cancer treatment. The app offers access, collection and sharing of long term and consistent personal health status data through an integrated digital representation, which helps deliver cancer patient empowerment, risk prediction, prevention, clinical analysis and treatment tailored to individual citizens.
The app iManageMyHealth supports users in managing their drugs and drug intakes and warns in case of known interactions between these drugs. 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 the felt level of pain and fatigue, advice and link to public information resources.
iSupportMyPatients is an informative app intended for physicians of cancer patients who share their health data with them in iPHR. This app offers health professionals to use disease management services of the Care Flow Engine to monitor a specific side effect of chemotherapies by leveraging a predictive risk model for febrile neutropenia and to obtain advice regarding the optimal therapy for a patient.
The Serious Game for Adults promotes a healthier lifestyle, disease management and the belief of the patients to be able to manage and to face their disease. The game puts the users in the role of an authority figure who manages a town where they help residents with their cancer related lifestyle problems. The user are invited to think critically and strategically in order to balance their resources and time, while also viewing the issues surrounding their cancer from a different perspective.
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 conducts two pilots, one for adult cancer patients and one for children to assess the value of the iManageCancer Platform. These pilots are prepared, ethical clearance is obtained, the productive system environment is in

Final results

The project empowers cancer patients and their relatives to better manage the cancer disease in all phases of the cancer care continuum in collaboration with their healthcare providers. The iManageCancer platform for self-management inform the patients about their condition through personalised data driven information services and help them participate in the care process by sharing pain and side effect information with their doctor and keeping track and managing their therapy and health status. It also alleviate the psychological burden by dedicated serious games for adult and young patients while the dedicated drug-drug interaction, psycho-emotional evaluation and clinician-patient communication services reduce unnecessary visits to the hospital ensuring that serious deterioration of the disease will be assessed earlier detected or even prevented.

The iManageCancer platform aims to address effectively the limited interaction between the patient, his/her family and the clinician, caregiver. The â€˜clinical viewâ€™ of the iPHR optimises these interactions while offering to the patients specific decision aids for the consultation process that will support them to participate more actively in clinical care process.

iManageCancer provides ICT based instruments to assess the psycho-emotional status of the patient and to evaluate the resilience in his family and support the integration of off-the-shelve sensors and medical devices that allows assessing relevant vital signs and parameters related to lifestyle for further enhancing patient involvement and active participation in the therapy care process. A validation study assessed the psychometric properties of the tools in cancer patients and their families. The tools were incorporated in the iPHR.