In an epoch where shared decision making is gaining importance, a patient’s commitment to and knowledge about his/her health condition is becoming more and more relevant. Health literacy is one of the most important factors in enhancing the involvement of patients in their care. Nevertheless, other factors can impair patient processing and understanding of health information: psychological aspects and cognitive style may affect the way patients approach, select, and retain information. This paper describes the development and validation of a short and easy to fill-out questionnaire that measures and collects psycho-cognitive information about patients, named ALGA-C. ALGA-C is a multilingual, multidevice instrument, and its validation was carried out in healthy people and breast cancer patients. In addition to the aforementioned questionnaire, a patient profiling mechanism has also been developed. The ALGA-C Profiler enables physicians to rapidly inspect each patient’s individual cognitive profile and see at a glance the areas of concern. With this tool, doctors can modulate the language, vocabulary, and content of subsequent discussions with the patient, thus enabling easier understanding by the patient. This, in turn, helps the patient formulate questions and participate on an equal footing in the decision-making processes. Finally, a preview is given on the techniques under consideration for exploiting the constructed patient profile by a personal health record (PHR). Predefined rules will use a patient’s profile to personalise the contents of the information presented and to customise ways in which users complete their tasks in a PHR system. This optimises information delivery to patients and makes it easier for the patient to decide what is of interest to him/her at the moment.

-The impact of cancer on healthcare is increasing. Therefore, it is key that all doctors receive oncology training. This study surveyed UK undergraduate medical schools to determine the extent of oncology training provided by their curricula. Data on foundation year (FY) and core medical training (CMT) programmes were obtained and analysed for the proportion of oncology posts. Of the responding medical schools, five (36%) had a defined period dedicated to oncology (mean 2 weeks). Four foundation schools were in London, with 10,094 FY posts in 1699 programmes. IntroductionWith one-in-four people dying from cancer in developed countries, with increasing survivorship and cancer incidence, there is an increased need for knowledge of active cancer management among doctors, irrespective of their primary, secondary or tertiary care specialisation.The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the International Union Against Cancer 1 recommend that medical students spend a minimum of two weeks training in oncology. 1 Despite this, in a study of undergraduate oncology teaching in 2007, Cave et al. observed that only 39% of UK medical students received any specific teaching in oncology; 2 the authors concluded that greater emphasis should be placed on oncology education, to prepare medical students to work with patients with cancer. 2 Consistent with the limited training in cancer care outside the speciality of oncology, a recent National Chemotherapy Advisory Group (NCAG) report has shown that the clinical care needs of patients with cancer in the community are not being met. 3 This has led to an initiative to develop the subspeciality of acute oncology. 3,4 However, an additional and sustainable solution might be to empower all doctors in primary and/or secondary care settings with the knowledge and experience to manage such patients appropriately until they can be transferred as needed to specialist oncology care.To our knowledge, except for the study by Cave et al., the extent of oncology training in undergraduate and postgraduate medical training programmes has not been previously evaluated. 2 Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine the current levels of training in oncology provided to junior doctors. Materials and methods Undergraduate and postgraduate training in oncologyTo determine undergraduate exposure to oncology, an email survey of the 29 clinical medical school deans in the UK was performed. Following undergraduate education in medicine, junior doctors in the UK complete two years of postgraduate foundation-year (FY) training before becoming eligible for full registration with the UK General Medical Council. This is followed by two years of specialist training in general and acute medicine, referred to as core medical training (CMT), before junior doctors become eligible to apply for subspeciality programmes. To assess the extent of oncology training in postgraduate training programs, data on numbers of posts by speciality in FY and CMT programmes in 2011 were obtained from the foundation scho...

PIONEER (Prostate Cancer DIagnOsis and TreatmeNt Enhancement through the power of big data in EuRope) is a European network of excellence for big data in prostate cancer, consisting of 32 private and public stakeholders from 9 countries across Europe. Launched by the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 and part of the Big Data for Better Outcomes Programme (BD4BO), the overarching goal of PIONEER is to provide high-quality evidence on prostate cancer management by unlocking the potential of big data. The project has identified critical evidence gaps in prostate cancer care, via a detailed prioritisation exercise including all key stakeholders. By standardising and integrating existing high quality and multidisciplinary data sources from prostate cancer patients across different stages of the disease, rich big data will be assembled into a single innovative data platform for research. Based on a unique set of methodologies, PIONEER aims at advancing the field of prostate cancer care with particular focus on improving prostate cancer-related outcomes, health system efficiency by streamlining patient management, and the quality of health and social care delivered to all prostate cancer patients and their families. The literature suggests there is underuse of effective treatments and overuse of ineffective treatment. For example, androgen deprivation therapy is sometimes overused in situations where it is not recommended. It is therefore crucial to identify the best treatment option for the individual patient.

Bladder cancer (BC) is the 10th most common malignancy worldwide and the patient experience is found to be worse than that for patients diagnosed with other cancer types. We aimed to develop a wellbeing intervention to help improve the bladder cancer patient experience by ameliorating their health-related Quality of Life (HRQoL). We followed the 3 phases of the modified Medical Research Council (MRC) Framework for development of complex interventions. Following a systematic review of the literature on mental, sexual, and physical wellbeing, we conducted discussion groups with patients and healthcare professionals on these 3 themes. A consultation phase was then conducted with all relevant stakeholders to co-design a wellbeing intervention as part of a feasibility study. A pragmatic wellbeing feasibility trial was designed based on the hypothesis that a wellbeing program will increase patient awareness and attendance to services available to them and will better support their needs to improve HRQoL. The primary feasibility endpoints are patient attendance to the services offered and changes in HRQoL. The principle of patient centered care has strengthened the commitment to provide a holistic approach to support BC patients. In this study, we developed a wellbeing intervention in collaboration with patients and healthcare professionals to meet an unmet need in terms of the BC patient experience.

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