The ONCOMMUN Program will receive close to €900,000 grant from EIT Health

The

ONCOMMUN Program

will receive a grant worth 900,000
euros for 2019-2020 by the European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT Health)
which will be used to promote well-being in cancer through new technologies. This pilot
program, which currently involves 350 women with breast cancer, is being carried out by
researchers from the Catalan Institute of Oncology (ICO) and the Bellvitge Biomedical
Research Institute (IDIBELL) and provides online support with personalized education in
health and psychosocial help.

The financial burden of cancer in Europe represents a total cost of 85,000 million euros.

This figure encompasses both treatment expenses and long work leaves associated with
the disease.

The ONCOMMUN Program combines the monitoring of the health and emotional status of
cancer patients with the possibility of requesting video-consultations, getting access to an
online campus with educational resources and the main features of a social network.

All these is offered through the ‘ICOnnectat’ mobile app, which aims to improve patient
experience and reduce the impact of cancer in several ways:

• Increasing quality of life, emotional well-being and oncological education as well as
  improving therapeutic adherence in 60-70% of participants.

• Reducing the time of work leave, the use of psychoactive drugs and health services
  in 20-30% of users.

Within this program, during 2020 mobile social net app called ‘Oncommunities’ is being
evolutionated in order to connect cancer survivors and patients that are still going through
the disease process. Thanks to an Artificial Intelligence algorithm and Machine Learning
technology, the app will be able to learn and automatically calculate the compatibility of two
users in order to have a “Therapeutic Mirror Experience”. Patients will be able to share
information and give emotional support to each other in a secure way.

It is expected that ICOnnectat’s services reaches a total of 500 breast cancer patientsby
the end of the year and is futher extended to other pathologies and types of cancer such
as myeloma. In addition, this program will be implemented in other hospitals in Spain in
2020 and, at present, it is already ongoing in other European countries thanks to an alliance
with the Portuguese Institute of Oncology of Coimbra (IPO), the Pedro Nunes Institute (IPN)
of Portugal and the Nofer Institute of Occupational Medicine (NIOM), in Poland.

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