PERSIST

PERSIST aims at developing an open and interoperable ecosystem to improve the care of cancer survivors. The key results to be achieved by partners are: increased self-efficacy and satisfaction with care as well as reduced psychological stress for a better management of the consequences of the cancer treatment and the disease, resulting in an improvement in health and wellbeing and a faster integration into the labour market, where applicable, compared to usual care (KR1); increased effectiveness in cancer treatment and follow-up by providing prediction models from Big Data that will support decision-making and contribute to optimal treatment decisions with positive consequences in the QoL and the health status of survivors (KR2); and improved information and evidence to advance the efficacy of management, intervention and prevention policies/strategies in order to timely treat side effects and, if possible, avoid secondary diseases and fatal events. The long-term result will be to reduce the socio-economic burden related to cancer survivors’ care (KR3). The ecosystem proposed consists of a Big Data platform to be built on top of an open infrastructure from one of the partners and a mHealth application for patients. The main building blocks to be developed are a multimodal sensing network running on a smart phone that will collect relevant data regarding the wellbeing of the patient; predictive models from anonymised health data from thousands of breast and colorectal patients; and modules essential for the development of a decision support system, which will employ the predictive models mentioned. Furthermore, PERSIST will contribute to establish evidence on the use of liquid biopsy techniques to the follow-up of cancer patients treated with curative purposes. A pilot study involving 160 patients and 32 health care professionals will be decisive to establish a co-creation methodology ranging from the earlies phases of the project throughout its conclusion.