The evidence that quality of life is a positive variable for the survival of cancer patients has prompted the interest of the health and pharmaceutical industry in considering that variable as a final clinical outcome. Sustained improvements in cancer care in recent years have resulted in increased numbers of people living with and beyond cancer, with increased attention being placed on improving quality of life for those individuals. Connected Health provides the foundations for the transformation of cancer care into a patient-centric model, focused on providing fully connected, personalized support and therapy for the unique needs of each patient. Connected Health creates an opportunity to overcome barriers to health care support among patients diagnosed with chronic conditions. This paper provides an overview of important areas for the foundations of the creation of a new Connected Health paradigm in cancer care. Here we discuss the capabilities of mobile and wearable technologies; we also discuss pervasive and persuasive strategies and device systems to provide multidisciplinary and inclusive approaches for cancer patients for mental well-being, physical activity promotion, and rehabilitation. Several examples already show that there is enthusiasm in strengthening the possibilities offered by Connected Health in persuasive and pervasive technology in cancer care. Developments harnessing the Internet of Things, personalization, patient-centered design, and artificial intelligence help to monitor and assess the health status of cancer patients. Furthermore, this paper analyses the data infrastructure ecosystem for Connected Health and its semantic interoperability with the Connected Health economy ecosystem and its associated barriers. Interoperability is essential when developing Connected Health solutions that integrate with health systems and electronic health records. Given the exponential business growth of the Connected Health economy, there is an urgent need to develop mHealth (mobile health) exponentially, making it both an attractive and challenging market. In conclusion, there is a need for user-centered and multidisciplinary standards of practice to the design, development, evaluation, and implementation of Connected Health interventions in cancer care to ensure their acceptability, practicality, feasibility, effectiveness, affordability, safety, and equity.

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Background The status of the data-driven management of cancer care as well as the challenges, opportunities, and recommendations aimed at accelerating the rate of progress in this field are topics of great interest. Two international workshops, one conducted in June 2019 in Cordoba, Spain, and one in October 2019 in Athens, Greece, were organized by four Horizon 2020 (H2020) European Union (EU)–funded projects: BOUNCE, CATCH ITN, DESIREE, and MyPal. The issues covered included patient engagement, knowledge and data-driven decision support systems, patient journey, rehabilitation, personalized diagnosis, trust, assessment of guidelines, and interoperability of information and communication technology (ICT) platforms. A series of recommendations was provided as the complex landscape of data-driven technical innovation in cancer care was portrayed. Objective This study aims to provide information on the current state of the art of technology and data-driven innovations for the management of cancer care through the work of four EU H2020–funded projects. Methods Two international workshops on ICT in the management of cancer care were held, and several topics were identified through discussion among the participants. A focus group was formulated after the second workshop, in which the status of technological and data-driven cancer management as well as the challenges, opportunities, and recommendations in this area were collected and analyzed. Results Technical and data-driven innovations provide promising tools for the management of cancer care. However, several challenges must be successfully addressed, such as patient engagement, interoperability of ICT-based systems, knowledge management, and trust. This paper analyzes these challenges, which can be opportunities for further research and practical implementation and can provide practical recommendations for future work. Conclusions Technology and data-driven innovations are becoming an integral part of cancer care management. In this process, specific challenges need to be addressed, such as increasing trust and engaging the whole stakeholder ecosystem, to fully benefit from these innovations.

Guideline-based clinical decision support systems (CDSSs) are expected to improve the quality of care by providing best evidence-based recommendations. However, because clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) may be incomplete and often lag behind the publication time of very last scientific results, CDSSs may not provide up-to-date treatments. It happens that clinical decisions made for specific patients do not comply with CDSS recommendations, whereas they comply with the state of the art. They may also be non-compliant because they rely on some implicit knowledge not covered by CPGs. We propose to capitalize the clinical know-how built from such non-compliant decisions and allow physicians to use it in future similar cases by the development of a decisional event structure that allows the modelling, storage, processing, and reuse of all the information related to a decision-making process. This structure allows the analysis of non-compliant decisions, which generates new experience-based rules. These new rules augment the knowledge embedded in CPGs supporting clinician decision for specific patients poorly covered by CPGs. This work is applied to the management of breast cancer within the EU Horizon 2020 project DESIREE.