Medical Research Institute of Hospital La Fe (HULAFE) has coordinated the initial definition of LifeChamps pilot use cases. Interactive activities with health care professionals were conducted in Task 2.1 to gather relevant information about the current use-case scenarios, determine the potential added value of LifeChamps in each specific scenario, familiarise clinicians with the project and stimulate their involvement in the project development.
These activities that consisted of either workshops or Delphi studies were conducted in the four clinical partner sites: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH), Academic Primary Health Care Centre (APC), Hospital Universitario La Fe (HULAFE), and University of Glasgow (UofG).
The key findings of these interactive activities were the following:
- Effective QoL assessment instruments need to be integrated in daily practice, including PROMs and PREMs to understand the determinants of patient’s life priorities and expectations.
- Patient’s environment needs to be considered to guide clinical decision making. Age is important, but there are other dimensions to evaluate: physical and mental wellbeing, stage of cancer, treatment and comorbidities.
- Caregiver as a key actor to provide additional information about patients that cannot be measured directly from objective measurements.
- Technology as a valuable tool to enable care outside hospital and primary care centers. The main concern was the use of technology by older patients, but it was also regarded as a challenge to determine if their technical skills are currently underestimated. A dashboard containing longitudinal information of patient’s QoL will be helpful for healthcare professionals.
- LifeChamps platform needs to be perceived as an extension of patient’s care in order to be accepted and adopted. The app should use a common, not complicated language and avoid causing anxiety with many reminders. Sensors should be transparent and user-friendly for the patients.
- Personalized recommendations to patients and caregivers can help them to cope with the situation better, as lack of information about their treatment is regarded as one of their main concerns.
More information about the methodology and results from interactive activities were reported in detail in deliverable D2.1. Pilot Use Cases (PUCs) will be refined and implemented in the following months to assess the real potential of LifeChamps.
