The ONCOMMUN Program will receive €900,000 grant to promote well-being in cancer

Reviewed by Kate Anderton, B.Sc. (Editor)Oct 11 2019

The ONCOMMUN Program will receive a grant worth 900,000 euros for 2019-2020 by the European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT Health) which will be used to promote well-being in cancer through new technologies. This pilot program, which currently involves 350 women with breast cancer, is being carried out by researchers from the Catalan Institute of Oncology (ICO) and the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) and provides online support with personalized education in health and psychosocial help.

The financial burden of cancer in Europe represents a total cost of 85,000 million euros.

This figure encompasses both treatment expenses and long work leaves associated with the disease.

The ONCOMMUN Program combines the monitoring of the health and emotional status of cancer patients with the possibility of requesting video-consultations, getting access to an online campus with educational resources and the main features of a social network.

All these is offered through the 'ICOnnectat' mobile app, which aims to improve patient experience and reduce the impact of cancer in several ways:

• Increasing quality of life, emotional well-being and oncological education as well as improving therapeutic adherence in 60-70% of participants.
• Reducing the time of work leave, the use of psychoactive drugs and health services in 20-30% of users.

Within this program, during 2020 mobile social net app called 'Oncommunities' is being evolutionated in order to connect cancer survivors and patients that are still going through the disease process. Thanks to an Artificial Intelligence algorithm and Machine Learning technology, the app will be able to learn and automatically calculate the compatibility of two users in order to have a "Therapeutic Mirror Experience". Patients will be able to share information and give emotional support to each other in a secure way.

It is expected that ICOnnectat's services reaches a total of 500 breast cancer patientsby the end of the year and is futher extended to other pathologies and types of cancer such as myeloma. In addition, this program will be implemented in other hospitals in Spain in 2020 and, at present, it is already ongoing in other European countries thanks to an alliance with the Portuguese Institute of Oncology of Coimbra (IPO), the Pedro Nunes Institute (IPN) of Portugal and the Nofer Institute of Occupational Medicine (NIOM), in Poland.