The European 4D PICTURE project has been working for the past year to improve the cancer patient journey and ensure that personal preferences are respected. It aims to help cancer patients, their families and healthcare professionals to better understand their options. As well as supporting their treatment and care options at every stage of the disease, based on evidence from a wealth of European data.
Now, the project, which involves nine European countries, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Sweden and Spain, is taking a further step to learn more about the experience of cancer patients with a new survey aimed at those who are undergoing cancer treatment or have been in the last three years.
A consortium involving the University of Zaragoza, through the Aragon Institute for Engineering Research (I3A), the Aragon Institute for Health Research (IIS Aragon), the Medical Oncology Service of the Miguel Servet University Hospital and the consultancy Fractal Strategy.
Cancer patients are faced with complex decision-making processes throughout the treatment continuum, as different options vary in terms of risk profiles and effects on patient survival and quality of life.
Responding to this questionnaire will help researchers learn more about experiences and attitudes towards treatment decision-making, the best ways to share information, the potential value of decision support tools, and positive and negative experiences with patients' cancer care trajectories. The survey can be completed via this link: https://4dpicture.eu/4dsurveyes or directly by accessing the project website: https://4dpicture.eu/
At the Medical Oncology Service of the Miguel Servet University Hospital, Dr. Antonio Antón, head of the service, and Dr. Roberto Pazo, oncologist at the hospital and principal investigator of this project at the Aragón Health Research Institute, are part of the team in charge, together with Jorge Sierra, professor at the Department of Design and Manufacturing Engineering of the School of Engineering and Architecture (EINA) and researcher at I3A Unizar, and the consultancy specialising in the design of public health services, Fractal Strategy, led by Carlos Romero. All of them collaborate in a coordinated manner in the implementation of the methodology.
The 4D PICTURE project has a duration of five years, with a budget of nine million euros, financed by Horizon Europe funds. It is being developed in a European consortium by a multidisciplinary team integrating health research, data science, epidemiology, biostatistics, innovation and design research, computational linguistics, health economics, implementation science, social sciences and humanities, building on and linking existing productive collaborations.
