Patient-oriented health care
Cancer as an episodic and chronic illness places new demands on patients and families to manage their own care, and it challenges old care paradigms. A multidisciplinary approach to treatment and survivorship care is needed in which personalised care based on the needs of the patient is the starting point.
There are several challenges here: 
- surviving cancer is not easy for a patient but they are increasingly prepared to act as self-conscious consumers rather than dependent patients
- patients need to be able to make informed decisions regarding their treatment choices and clinicians need to be able to discuss evidence-based options with them
- interoperability focused on diagnosis, treatment and outcome has to be built around the patient and not around the system.
In this sense, integration using ICT (e.g. mHealth apps) and related biotech and medical device solutions is not about structures, organisations or pathways, it is about better outcomes for cancer patients and survivors in which the real potential benefits are local. In essence this is about asking the right questions, performing the right research and translating the answers found into accessible and meaningful information and solutions for patients.
To this end we are involved in this agenda in two ways: as a project partner (e.g. INNOLABS and Cross4Health, INTENT, BenchCan) or when we are commissioned to co-write funding proposals usually with comprehensive cancer centres (e.g. funded projects include PRECISION led by NKI, INTENT led by Istituto Oncologico Veneto, COLOSYS led by NUST, B-CAST led by NKI).
