The Cancer Survivorship – AI for Well-being Cluster, the liaison initiative of research & innovation projects LIFECHAMPS; ONCORELIEF; MENHIR; PERSIST; QUALITOP; CLARIFY; ASCAPE; REBECCA; CAPABLE and FAITH, organized virtually, its 4th Meeting of Minds, on February 23rd and 24th, 2022. It was the first open to the public engagement event of the cluster around the single key question “How can new technologies better support patients?”. In response, more than 100 stakeholders and interested parties participated, including cancer patients, patient associations, healthcare providers, advocates and IT specialists, researchers and policymakers.
Many key messages were echoed throughout the fourth Meeting of Minds event. At policy level, the European Commission explained that a European Beating Cancer Plan has been activated and EU has set in train a programme for cancer research having the ambition to improve the lives of more than 3 million people by the year, 2030, through prevention, cure and for those affected by cancer including their families, to live better and longer.
At research and innovation level, notable points were made regarding on how technology will support clinicians, how personalized medicine´s tailor-made prevention and treatment strategies are key to fight cancer and improve patients’ well-being, how psychological, behavioral and social factors may influence the disease process, and how breaking away from relying only on traditional electronical health records and exploiting volume and variety of new data sources and real-world data can improve our research potential and provide cost-effective and efficient health care.
LifeChamps H2020 project was represented by AUTH partner, and specifically, Project Coordinator, Prof. Panos Bamidis & Scientific Coordinator, Dr. Antonis Billis, presenting the LIFECHAMPS R&I framework and its novel technological solution for integrated cancer care for the older cancer survivors, based on Big-Data, AI and Quality of Life behavioral models.
The LIFECHAMPS project aims to integrate cancer care with a focus on Quality of Life, specifically of older adult patients with breast, prostate cancer, or melanoma after treatment. The consortium is composed of 15 partners based in 10 different countries. The project is a Big-Data driven integrated care solution for geriatric oncology to counterbalance this problem. What the project attempted is undergoing is collecting data from different gadgets and digital solutions to create digital biomarkers. These biomarkers, along with the self-reported symptoms, measure and experiences from patients, are collected in a Big-Data infrastructure with High Performance Computing (HPC) enablers, which aim to create a multimodal analysis that will provide good digital frailty phenotypes indexes with the aim of classifying patients in frail, pre-frail and fit classes.
Moreover, on the same day of the Cluster event, a round table with cancer patients & patient association representatives was organized, coordinated by APC and ECPC, LifeChamps project partners. Dr. Panos Papachristou (APC Coordinator & PI) guided the discussion in the round table, asking the representatives to highlight -according to their experience the importance of patient engagement in research & clinical trials. Alma Zois Thessalonikis (Women with Breast Cancer Association), associate partner of LifeChamps in Greece also participated.
On Day 2, ECPC President Kathi Apostolidis gave a keynote speech on the role of patients in R&I and particularly on their motivation to participate in patient-centered clinical and other research initiatives. Last, but not least, in the closing of the event, Dr. Antonis Billis from AUTH, moderated an open session, presenting the aims & scopes of the Cluster, also reflecting some of the milestones, set by the Cluster members, for the upcoming period.
The full report of the Cluster MoM 4 Event is available here.
