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GPFC platform

Twinning solution

Implementation of e-platform for taste control in Italian cancer patients

Twinning type

Main policy priority

Digital tools for citizen empowerment and for person-centred care

Originator

PrimFoodCare vzw (Belgium)

Adopter(s)

Fondazione ANT Italia Onlus (Italy)

Short description

Cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy experience many side effects, including taste disorders. As a result, since food intake decreases and the risk of malnutrition increases, therapies are less tolerated and recovery can be burdened. Taste alterations also negatively affect the quality of life. Obtaining pleasure from food and the ability to maintain social eating habits can be impeded by food aversion and can entail mood disturbances and decreased social functioning. This twinning action aims to implement the Gastrology & Primary Food Care (GPFC) platform in the Italian context, a digital platform developed by the Center for Gastrology in Leuven(Belgium). GPFC-platform allows mapping the individual profile of the taste perception in patients who experience changes in taste. GPFC also provides screening tools to monitor the nutritional state of patients. Professionals of Italian home care will be trained about the use of the e-platform and the use of all included nutritional screening and assessment tools. By studying the degree of alteration of gustatory, olfactory and trigeminal stimulation and by taste control techniques the trained professionals will be ready to suggest personalized recipes so to make the patients perceive a flavor similar or equal to what they felt before the start of the chemotherapy treatments.

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Twinning activities

This twinning aimed to carry out the necessary preconditions to successfully expand ANT assistance with personalised care for nutritional problems in individual cancer patients suffering chemotherapy-induced taste disorders in Italy. The main activities carried out were: 1) The translation of contents and the cultural embeddedness of Italian eating habits/recipes in the e-platform. 2) Training the target professionals about the use of nutritional screening tools. 3)Training coaching chefs about the preparation of specific recipes based on the hedonic profile of individual cancer patients.

Outcomes

Thanks to GPCF platform, ANT assistance will be able to not only significantly improve the food intake of its patients, but also to greatly enhance their quality of life as well as their families’ one. In particular, this twinning action consists of the availability of the ready-to-use platform in Italy. With this tool, the twinning partners want to bring an initial but fundamental change in the health sector by introducing a nutrition platform, in addition to the medical and care ones that already exist today.

Added value and benefits

This twinning provided the adopter with the indispensable preconditions to successfully expand its assistance with personalised care for nutritional problems in cancer patients. As a matter of fact this twinning solution lays the foundations for the use of an important and useful tool for self-management and for the improvement of the quality of life. Due to the digital approach, the cost of the intervention phase will be low, and it will be possible to bring this solution to thousands of cancer patients assisted by ANT.

Barriers and success factors

N.A.

Outlook

After partial adoption during the twinning project, ANT anticipates to first scale up to 100 patients in 2021, in combination with scientific research, and then t upscale to approximately 400 patients to provide sound statistical evidence.

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