It will boost the adoption of best practices of participatory research in Artificial Intelligence for healthcare and well-being for the benefit of EU citizens.

In April 2021, five EU-funded projects focused on healthcare and well-being, led by the FAITH project, formed a cluster with the aim of helping each other to collect, share, and understand early feedback from end-users on the solutions they are developing.

The projects are brought together first by a common interest in the issues of mental health, well-being, depression, and patient support. Secondly, they all have adopted a participatory research vision, therefore also sharing a common approach. With the motto “We don’t work in silos”, the “Cancer Survivorship – AI for Well-being” cluster is collaborating to ensure that all the projects involved adopt a highly user-centric approach to their solutions.

Joint initiatives

The cluster is engaging external stakeholders and end-users to obtain their views, and to verify and validate the ongoing work of the engaging projects. To this end, it has been organising a series of “Meetings of Minds”, two of which will take place later in 2021, to have research projects meet key stakeholders.

In addition, it aims to run an industry-focused event in 2021 to showcase ongoing projects’ work and obtain early feedback on it. Furthermore, the cluster intends to strengthen the wider take up and interest in the outcomes of the participating projects. Finally, the projects will also explore together possibilities for industrial uptake of their outcomes.

Cluster members

FAITH: a Federated Artificial Intelligence solution for moniToring mental Health status after cancer treatment

FAITH (h2020-faith.eu) is aiming to create an innovative solution supporting cancer patients’ quality of life. To this end, the project uses Artificial Intelligence based technologies to track targeted depression markers. By monitoring downward trajectories in these markers, FAITH can ultimately alert cancer survivors’ point of care of these declines, allowing them to provide adequate support to cancer survivors.

MENHIR: Mental health monitoring through interactive conversations

The MENHIR project (menhir-project.eu) aims to explore the possibilities of conversational technologies (chatbots) to understand, promote and protect mental health and assist people with anxiety and mild depression manage their condition. MENHIR chatbot technology will provide symptom and mood management, personalized support and motivation, coping strategies, mental health education, signposting to online resources and complementing the support received by local services.

Oncorelief: A digital guardian angel enhancing cancer patient’s wellbeing and health status improvement following treatment

Advances in early diagnosis and cancer therapy have greatly improved chances of cancer survival. A big challenge is to ensure survivors have the best possible quality of life. ONCORELIEF (oncorelief.eu) is bringing together the latest technological advances and occupational psychology/health sciences to develop a user-centred artificial intelligence (AI) system to create an intuitive smart digital assistant called Guardian Angel that will help cancer survivors remain engaged on their wellness journey.

LifeChamps: A Collective Intelligence Platform to Support Cancer Champions

LifeChamps (lifechamps.eu) aims to provide support to middle aged and older (pre-frail and frail) cancer patients. It has developed a big data-driven solution with an artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics engine that can offer timely and accurate clinical decision support. This new tool can identify the factors that affect quality of life of a patient, offering personalised healthcare services as regards symptoms monitoring, treatment, and rehabilitation.

QUALITOP: Monitoring multidimensional aspects of QUAlity of Life after cancer ImmunoTherapy an Open smart digital Platform for personalized prevention and patient management

QUALITOP (h2020qualitop.liris.cnrs.fr) aims at developing a European immunotherapy-specific open Smart Digital Platform and using big data analysis, artificial intelligence, and simulation modelling approaches. This will enable collecting and aggregating efficiently real-world data to monitor health status and quality of life of cancer patients given immunotherapy, in the end providing “real-time” recommendations stemming from patient profiles and feedbacks via the Smart Digital Platform.