The worldwide incidence of cancer is gradually increasing, meanwhile the overall death rates from cancer continue to decline. These global trends have resulted in more people than ever living with or beyond cancer. As such, there is a greater necessity to improve and optimize cancer care services, throughout diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation, and end-of-life care. Modern technologies, often enabled by the availability of big data and advanced analytics, have demonstrated potential to enhance the current quality of cancer care, for example by improving information access, informing clinical decision making and facilitating communications.

Pioneering research is now being conducted in the field of technology for cancer care, resulting in the development of novel solutions to a diverse spectrum of problems in this area. However, the process of evaluation of these innovations and how they operate within a ‘real-world’ context is at a less advanced stage. The clinical assessment of technology possesses many challenges and is influenced by numerous variables. As a result, there is an emphasis on the early evaluation of technology by including key stakeholders throughout its’ design and development.

Evidently, as researchers involved in the creation of novel technologies for cancer care, we must consider and share both the innovative concepts being developed, and also how they are being assessed and accepted in real-world or clinical situations. This track aims to address both these themes through six originals studies to be presented in the session.

This track is a combined effort from 4 EU funded projects:

BOUNCE (www.bounce-project.eu) proposes a holistic integrative and dynamic approach for investigating various heterogeneous but relevant biological, social, environmental, lifestyle, occupational, and socio-economic and psychosocial factors as they interact over time during the immediate cancer post-diagnosis period to account for individual fluctuations in resilience and eventually contribute to clinical outcomes and patient well-being.

CATCH ITN (www.catchitn.eu), which is an EU Horizon 2020-funded PhD training network, with academic and industry partners across Ireland, Spain and Denmark. The research within CATCH focuses on the development and use of technology to improve the quality of life of individuals living with and beyond cancer.

DESIREE (www.desiree-project.eu) aims to provide a web-based software ecosystem for the personalized, collaborative and multidisciplinary management of Primary Breast Cancer by specialized Breast Units, from diagnosis to therapy and follow-up.

MyPal (mypal-project.eu) is a Horizon 2020 (H2020) Research & Innovation Action aiming to foster palliative care for cancer patients by leveraging patient reported outcome (PRO). Through a personalised digital health intervention, MyPal aspires to empower cancer patients and their caregivers in capturing more accurately their symptoms/conditions, communicate them in a seamless and effective way to their healthcare providers and, ultimately, foster the time for action through the prompt identification of important deviations in the patient’s state and quality of life. MyPal targets two different patient groups, namely, adults suffering from hematologic malignancies and children with solid tumors or hematologic malignancies, and it will evaluate its intervention via two clinical studies that will be conducted in 6 clinical sites across Europe.

Organizing Committee

Gabriel Signorelli

Connected Health PhD Researcher at University College of Dublin, Ireland; Sports & Exercise Science Researcher at Oncoavanze, Seville, Spain

With a master’s degree in Sports & Exercise Science, Gabriel worked in the fitness business for 10 years and was part of the developing and implementation team of BTFITapp, a Fitness App where his work was to specify the products and manage the user experience department. Gabriel is currently working on his PhD about how to improve Physical Activity Throughout Technologies in Cancer Patients to improve their Quality of Life.

Dr. Haridimos Kondylakis(M)

Collaborating Researcher at Computational BioMedicine Laboratory (CBML), Institute of Computer Science, Foundation of Research & Technology-Hellas (FORTH)

He received his PhD degree in Computer Science from the Univ. of Crete. His research interests span the following areas: Semantic Integration; Knowledge Evolution; Applications of Semantic Technologies to eHealth Systems; Big Data Management; Personal Health Systems. He has extensive experience in participating in more than 15 European Projects and was the co-PI in the iManageCancer project leading the technical development. He has more than 110 publications in premier international conferences, books and journals including ACM SIGMOD, VLDB, VLDBJ, JWS and KER. He has also served as a reviewer in several journals and conferences, such as JWS, JODS, CIKM, EDBT, ISWC and as a PC member in premier conferences and workshops.

tel: +30-2810-3914497 | website
email: kondylak@ics.forth.gr

Dr. Vassilis G. Koutkias

Principal Researcher at Institute of Applied Biosciences (INAB), Centre of Research & Technology Hellas (CERTH)

His research interests include knowledge engineering and decision support systems, as well as pervasive computing, with major application areas drug safety and personal health systems. Since 2000, he conducted R&D in more than 20 EU-funded R&D projects in the fields of patient safety, personal health systems, Ambient Assisted Living and eInclusion. He is currently the Coordinator of the MyPal H2020 project. He is the editor of three books and the author of one book and more than 150 papers in peer-reviewed international journals, book series and conference proceedings. He currently serves at the Editorial Board of the Drug Safety journal, as Associate Editor for the BMC Medical Informatics & Decision Making journal and as Editor for the Decision Support section of the IMIA Yearbook. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE.

Programme Committee