GERONTE H2020 Project - GERDAT002 - Composition of the health care professional consortium

The present document is a dataset generated as part of Deliverable D1.1. of the GERONTE project, which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Programme under Grant Agreement N°945218. It aims to provide the geriatric oncology professional community with a dataset of core health care professionals that should be involvoed in the evaluation and treatment trajectories of older patients with cancer and multimorbidity.

GERONTE is a 5-year research and innovation project (April 2021 to Mars 2026) funded by the European Union within the framework of the H2020 Research and Innovation programme, in response to the health societal challenge topic SC1-BHC-24-2020 “Healthcare interventions for the management of the elderly multimorbid patient”. The overall aim of GERONTE is to improve quality of life - defined as well-being on three levels: global health status, physical functioning and social functioning- for older multimorbid patients, while reducing overall costs of care. To this end, GERONTE will co-design, test, and prepare for deployment an innovative cost-effective patient-centred holistic health management system, hereafter referred to as the GERONTE intervention. GERONTE intervention will rely on an ICT based application for real-time collection and integration of standardised clinical and home patient-reported data. GERONTE intervention will be demonstrated in the context of care of multimorbid patients having cancer as a dominant morbidity, and be adaptable to any other combination of morbidities.

An important component of the GerOnTe care pathway was to determine which health care professionals should be included in the health care professional consortium (HPC) providing care for the patient. Beforehand, we had considered the option of four core members and at least eight other participants depending on the patient’s specificities or profile.

Based on clinical experience, we developed a list of 15 potential participants, including general practitioner, one or more oncology specialists (such as surgeons, medical oncologists, radiotherapists), geriatrician, oncology nurse, social worker, clinical pharmacist, physiotherapist, anaesthesiologist, home care nurse, dietician, occupational therapist, spiritual helpers/clerics, psychologist/psychiatrist, palliative care specialist, organ-specific physician(s) such as cardiologist, pulmonologist, nephrologist, rheumatologist etc.

This list was presented to the expert panel, and they were asked to determine whether or not these participants should be involved in decision-making and/or the subsequent oncologic care trajectory; experts could specify if these participants should be involved for all patients, only in specific situations/profiles, or did not need to be involved.

The results of this expert panel survey and the subsequent composition of the health care professional consortium forms the basis of this dataset.