GSS EU Science Funding Gateway

A ‘Cancer Survivor Smart Card’ will link with a ’resource’ function to give access to best practices, guidelines and recommendations specifically targeted to cancer survivors, with a view to helping them to address or to connect with professionals in different areas, to deal with the most common issues that survivors face, such as insufficient management of late and long-term effects of treatment, unmet psychosocial needs, self-management, pain management, and issues related to rehabilitation, emotional distress, tumour recurrence and metastatic disease.

The action will support the development, delivery and usability of a personalised ‘Cancer Survivor Smart Card’ by 2022. The smart card, in the form of an interoperable portable eCard or app, will store certain information related to the monitoring and follow-up of the survivor, including the survivor’s clinical history and follow-up. The smart card will allow connection with the health professionals responsible for the individual’s follow-up, including the survivor’s general practitioner, to improve healthcare provider and survivor communication on the survivor’s worries, questions and other matters of relevance to improve the survivor’s quality of life. The action will involve patients’ groups and health and social care providers, in order to apply a participatory and co-creative approach to help with the development of the tool, and to coach a group of ‘card-users’ to pilot the smart card’s usage once it has been developed, in preparation for the wider application phase. The action will be implemented taking into account the assumption that communication between patients and clinicians embraces three core attributes of ‘patient-centered’ care:

• consideration of patients’ needs, perspectives, and individual experiences;
• provision of opportunities to patients to participate in their care (‘self-management’);
• enhancement of the patient-clinician-nursing relationship.