LifeChamps Project
Big Data for Cancer Treatment
What will we do?
Project Overview
The steady increase in life expectancy, mean age and cancer survivorship across the developed countries together with evidence from cancer and geriatrics care research bring forward the urgent need to deal with the “age issue” as a key component of global cancer care strategies. In 2012, an estimated 6.7 million new cases of cancer were diagnosed in adults aged 65 years and older, representing 47.5% of the total number of new cancer cases worldwide while 8% of the world population in that time was aged 65 years and older. On the other side, increasing age and comorbidities are often associated with a discriminant lower use of aggressive cancer therapies, as well as a higher neglection for their preferences in health‐related quality of life (HRQOL) care support.
To address the above, LifeChamps delivers a novel, context-aware and large-scale analytics framework capable of delivering multi-dimensional Quality of Life (QOL) support to all the different cancer life champions during and after their treatments. LifeChamps is providing support to aged and older (pre-frail and frail) cancer patients, as well as their caregivers and healthcare professionals, with an integrated Big Data-driven solution capable to improve their QOL via a timely and more accurate clinical decision support at the point of care. Its Artificial Intelligence (AI) and analytics engine, running both at the cloud and at the mobile edge, can determine accurately which factors affect the oncological patients’ QOL the most, during and after their treatment. Furthermore, complemented by a health recommender system LifeChamps offers personalized healthcare services (such as symptom monitoring, treatment and rehabilitation) to these patients and their caregivers. Finally, a multi-factorial frailty model will allow to stratify sub-clinical frail groups of geriatric cancer patients towards more personalized treatment.
Overall, LifeChamps aims at shifting the discrimination barrier for older cancer patients through the integration of different clinical and digital tools such as PROMs, PREMs, symptomatic and geriatric measures, mHealth and wearables, machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms for Big Data. As its end result, Lifechamps will develop a novel, sophisticated and multifaceted clinical decision support tool for a comprehensive geriatric assessment. By doing so, LifeChamps, aims at including geriatric cancer patients as active members of the integrated care model, since care team coordination is feasible through the combination of cancer symptom monitoring and frailty modeling. Additionally, Lifechamps aims to expand the current base of knowledge for the healthcare support of older people with cancer as well as to create a digital intervention reflecting the suggested best practices in geriatric. From a technological viewpoint, multiple and heterogeneous data are constantly produced during the many cancer patients’ treatment stages. Up to now such data evolve in silos and are accessible by separate stakeholders (clinics, oncologists, geriatricians, caregivers, etc.) with no evident data correlations detection which could lead to patients-centric disruptive treatments. The LifeChamps project recognizes this and puts at the centre-stage of the efforts the use of state-of-the-art Big Data technologies to design strategies to address the QOL of cancer patients during and after cancer treatments. More specifically, based on a collaborative and personalized approach, LifeChamps envisages delivering an open, data-centric, secure and smart platform capable of supporting cancer champions in their endeavors from the moment of diagnosis to therapy and recovery.
The vision of LifeChamps is to address the inherent complexity caused by cancer treatments and to act in the monitoring of health status and improvement of quality of life in a significant manner by using emerging developments in the fields of Big Data, Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence. Its innovative components will be built upon three pillars:
Ultimately, LifeChamps will contribute decisively towards (a) increasing treatment safety, (b) improving efficiency of resource utilization, and (c) minimizing the conduct of unnecessary clinical procedures. The LifeChamps platform will be validated in four multi-national pilot use case scenarios aimed at demonstrating its applicability and validity for all the requirements of the SC1-DTH01-2019 Call (prediction, care, advice).
The LifeChamps project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 875329. Horizon 2020 is the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme ever with nearly €80 billion of funding available over 7 years (2014 to 2020) – in addition to the private investment that this money will attract. It promises more breakthroughs, discoveries and world-firsts by taking great ideas from the lab to the market.
Project Details
Project Evaluation
To prove the applicability, usability, effectiveness and impact of the LifeChamps concepts, models and methods in industrial, real-life infrastructures, services and applications, the integrated LifeChamps platform will be validated in realistic clinical trials and conditions. Proof-of-concept pilots will run in four countries, following-up >250 older cancer patients (aged 50+), for the time frame of 12 months after they have been diagnosed with cancer. A comparative study between older adults at risk for frailty versus older adults at risk of frailty with a cancer diagnosis and active treatment will be conducted, allowing to study the underlying mechanisms, that the cancer treatment introduces and causes long-term effects related to frailty incidence. Multi-faceted assessment of the LifeChamps solution will be attempted, including the use of tools and methodologies, such as MAFEIP.
Overall Methodology
LifeChamps will follow an AGILE development approach comprising of the following four phases.
Phase 1 (Definition): The definition phase marks the beginning of the project and involves the identification of the user requirements that will drive the design of the LifeChamps platform, and the specification of the technical requirements of its components. To ensure a user driven approach, LifeChamps envisages a strong involvement of the end users in all three design and development cycles (1st, 2nd and final platform prototype).
Phase 2 (Implementation): The implementation phase takes off from the user requirements specification, and comprises a range of integrated, multidisciplinary research and technology tasks.
Phase 3 (Prototype & System Integration): With the successful completion of all tasks in phase 2, the stand-alone LifeChamps components will be integrated into an operational prototype platform that includes all the proposed LifeChamps components. The prototype will be tested, integrated and demonstrated in real environments for each PUC separately. Thus, there will be at least five Proof of Concepts (PoCs) to showcase the different features of the LifeChamps Platform.
Phase 4 (Testing & User Validation): In the final phase of the project, the LifeChamps platform will be validated in four real-life pilot use cases covering different scenarios.
Project Progress
Overall Project Progress (in Months)
*Progress data are updated every month. Last updated: November 2023
Work Plan Analysis
Work Plan Details
*Abbreviations explanation:
AUTH: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, ALPT: Altran Portugal SA, ECPC: European Cancer Patient Coalition, EMC: Dell EMC, APC: Stockholm Health Provisions, UPV: Universitat Politècnica de València, HULAFE: Hospital La Fe, UOS: University of Surrey, KI: Karolinska Institutet, SALU: Salumedia Tecnologías SL, INTRA: Intrasoft International S.A., CLS: CyberLens B.V., MYSPHERA: MySphera SL, UofG: University of Glasgow, MDS: Massive Dynamic Sweden
