GERONTE H2020 project - GERDAT001 - Core multimorbidity dataset

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 comorbidity data to be included and assessed in the evaluation 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 comorbidity information is need for optimizing treatment decision making and the subsequent care trajectory. We showed a list of comorbidities from literature and subsequently asked an expert panel to determine which of these were relevant for oncologic decision making and care. As the experts also stated that additional information on the severity of a comorbid condition is needed to know if it impacts an oncologic decision or a treatment trajectory. Therefore, we asked the experts to state for the sixteen somatic/psychiatric comorbidities considered important in the previous round, whether or not the presence itself is sufficient information or if they needed extra information quantifying the severity; if so, we also asked which information.

This led to the composition of the dataset presented here.