Fraunhofer Institute for Biomedical Engineering IBMT, 66386 St. Ingbert, Germany
Correspondence to: stephan.kiefer@ibmt.fraunhofer.de
Significant improvements due to cancer research have led to more cancer patients being cured, and a great many more being enabled to live with their cancer. 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 has provided a cancer disease self-management platform designed according to the specific needs of patients and focusing on their wellbeing [1]. The iManageCancer project is a European research activity to empower patients in decision making with their doctors and strengthen their capability to manage their diseases through novel health apps, serious games and secure eHealth services. Nine partners from five European countries have created intelligent, informative and fun ways to let those with chronic illnesses manage their health in a new way, all from their smartphone.
This special issue provides insights into some of the tools for patients, their families and their health professionals which have been accomplished in the iManageCancer project. They do not represent isolated solutions but are all integrated in an intelligent personal health record (iPHR) as the backbone that gathers the entire patient reported data, ready to share them with the healthcare team or to make them available for research under the full control of their owners [2],[3].
The mobile platform comprises a sophisticated generic decision support framework that is presented in one of the papers. It exploits predictive models on side effects and optimal treatment choices and assists patients and doctors in detecting and managing some side effects of the therapy.
The project also addresses the psycho-emotional dimension of the disease with respective tools embedded in iPHR to cope with the distress of the patient and also his/her family. A novel scale to measure distress in families is presented in Development of an eHealth tool for cancer patients: monitoring psycho-emotional aspects with the Family Resilience questionnaire (FaRe) by Faccio et al.
Further to this, an app is presented for patients with cancer, in particular of the breast and the prostate, to monitor and manage their lifestyles to achieve their health related goals.
As access to high quality healthcare information for cancer patients plays an important role in educating and thus empowering the patient, the platform also contains a personalised health information recommender tool as described in Personal Health Information Recommender: implementing a tool for the empowerment of cancer patients by Iatraki et al. Oncologists can feed this tool with relevant and quality controlled information resources from the internet.
The gaming approach of iManageCancer to educate patients and to motivate in particular children to fight the disease and to comply with their therapy with the help of two serious games is illustrated in The role of serious games in the iManageCancer project by Hoffmann and Wilson.
Finally, Crico et al highlight important regulatory aspects of health apps in general in mHealth and telemedicine apps: in search of a common regulation.
The iManageCancer platform is currently being evaluated in a clinical pilot with breast and prostate cancer patients in Italy and a clinical pilot with paediatric cancer patients in Germany.
Further information about the iManageCancer project can be found on our website at: http://imanagecancer.eu/
References
[1] Renzi C, Fioretti C, Oliveri S, Mazzocco K, Zerini D, Ales-sandro O, Rojas DP, Jereczek-Fossa BA and Pravettoni G (2017) A Qualitative investigation on patient empowerment in prostate cancer Front Psychol Jul 26 8 1215
[2] Kondylakis H, Bucur A, Dong F, Renzi C, Manfrinati A, Graf N, Hoffman S, Koumakis L, Pravettoni G, Marias K, Tsiknakis MN, Kiefer S (2017) iManageCancer: Developing a platform for empowering patients and strengthening self-management in cancer diseases Proc 30th IEEE Int Symp on Computer-Based Medical Systems (CBMS) Thessaloniki, Greece
[3] Koumakis L, Kondylakis H, Chatzimina M, Iatraki G, Argyropaidas P, Kazantzaki E, Tsiknakis M, Kiefer S, Marias K (2016) Designing smart analytical data services for a personal health framework Proc 13th Int Conf on Wearable, Micro & Nano Technologies for Personalized Health, Stud Health Technol Inform 224 123-128
