Objectives

MyPal will develop an innovative framework aiming to foster palliative cancer care, relying on the deployment of advanced ePRO systems that will enable timely reporting and monitoring of: symptoms; adverse events related to both the underlying disease but also the treatment; Quality of Life, (QoL), and general wellbeing of people with cancer and their caregivers.

The potential of ePRO systems has been presented in various studies, with emerging – but still little – evidence concerning palliative care. In particular, some RCTs of palliative-care interventions in patients with advanced-stage cancer have used PRO-based endpoints to assess clinical benefit. The demonstrated benefits of these interventions in symptom management, QoL and mood state are well-promising, dictating potential changes in clinical practice.

To this end, MyPal proposes a comprehensive intervention for relieving symptom burden and distress in people with cancer as well as preventing disease- and/or treatment-related adverse events (both early and late-onset), that entails the deployment of user-friendly digital health tools for effective reporting by the patients and/or their caregivers.

More specifically, MyPal will address the following objectives:

Objective 1: Design a comprehensive, patient-centred intervention for palliative care in cancer by adapting and advancing patient reported outcome (PRO) systems

Objective 2: Reduce symptom burden for people with cancer in need of palliative care

Objective 3: Reinforce patient participation and empowerment in palliative care

Objective 4: Provide novel tools for exploiting PROs and advancing electronic patient reported outcome (ePRO) systems

Objective 5: Reinforce the evidence-base of the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of ePRO for palliative care for people with cancer

Objective 6: Prove the feasibility of integrating the proposed intervention in palliative care regimes and healthcare systems across Europe