Project description
Helping head and neck cancer survivors get back to normal life
The number of treatment options available for head and neck cancer (HNC) has increased in the last decade thanks to advanced technologies. While current post-treatment care plans focus on functional and health conditions, there are socioeconomic determinants of quality of life that also need to be addressed. The EU-funded BD4QoL project aims to improve HNC survivors’ quality of life by developing a person-centred monitoring and follow-up plan. It will use artificial intelligence and Big Data collected from mobile devices, in combination with multi-source clinical and socioeconomic data and patients’ reported outcomes. Analysis of the quality of life indicators collected over time will facilitate early detection of risks, prevent long-term effects of treatment, and inform patients and caregivers for personalised interventions.
Objective
Head and neck cancer can take away a patient’s “right to feel human,” and its impact on physical appearance, physical functioning, psychological status and general quality of life (QoL) can be devastating. Over the past several decades, the number of patients who survive head and neck cancer (HNC) has increased; this makes lifelong surveillance critical. HNC imposes an extremely high socioeconomic burden on patients during and after cancer compared to other tumors, including costs from treatment-induced morbidities, loss of workforce participation and short-term disability. Current survivorship care plans mostly focus on functional and health conditions of treated patients, whereas socioeconomic determinants of quality of life are often neglected due to difficult data collection.
The widespread technologies for social communication and unobtrusive personal monitoring embedded in smartphones and object we commonly use and in our living environments have the potential to unobtrusively collect wealth of indicators of individual QoL. BD4QoL objective is to improve HNC survivor’s Quality of Life through person-centred monitoring and follow-up plan by contribution of artificial intelligence and big data unobtrusively collected from commonly used mobile devices, in combination with multi-source clinical, -omic, socioeconomic data and patients reported outcomes, to profile HNC survivors for pBD4QoL objective is to improve HNC survivor’s Quality of Life through person-centred monitoring and follow-up plan by contribution of artificial intelligence and big data unobtrusively collected from commonly used mobile devices, in combination with multi-source clinical, -omic, socioeconomic data and patients reported outcomes, to profile HNC survivors for personalized monitoring and support. The analysis of QoL indicators collected over time will allow to early detect risks, prevent long-term effects of treatment and inform patients and caregivers for personalized interventions.
Fields of science
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligence
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesdata sciencebig data
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringinformation engineeringtelecommunicationsmobile phones
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineoncologyhead and neck cancer
- social scienceseconomics and businessbusiness and managementemployment
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinator
20122 Milano
Italy