Engaging Stakeholders For A More Sustainable Output

One of the principal goals of the BOUNCE project is to develop a decision support system that can predict the resilience trajectories of breast cancer patients. Understanding stakeholders’ needs is crucial for the BOUNCE consortium – without that it would be challenging to develop a platform, which could become a routine tool in clinical practice. Only through a platform which is applicable in real world contexts, can the ultimate goal of benefiting as many breast cancer patients and health care professionals become reality.

Stakeholder feedback has been gathered during the autumn and winter of 2019/2020 in order to gain in-depth understanding of stakeholder needs and to assess the sustainability of the BOUNCE platform. To do this, the consortium has conducted workshops, and dissemination events and discussed with over 40 stakeholders (patients, IT professionals, health care professionals, patient organizations, and external business stakeholders) in Finland, Italy, Israel, and Portugal.

The feedback collected from patients and health care professionals confirms the unmet need for a tool that can predict a patient’s resilience potential. Professionals treating breast cancer patients have stated repeatedly in discussions how they would benefit from such a tool. However, they also voiced that extra attention should be aimed at the validation of the risk prediction algorithm, and the usability of the platform. Thus, care needs to be put into making the interface user friendly and visually compelling. Furthermore, the resilience prediction itself can only lead to increased value for the patients and professionals, if the service portfolio available to the patients is developed to include resilience-building interventions, and the professionals educated to utilize them. The consortium will continue to engage in discussions and develop the BOUNCE platform together with key stakeholders throughout the rest of the project.

The consortium wants to ensure the sustainability of the BOUNCE results and is currently working on the updated version of BOUNCE business plan. The aim of the business plan is to understand how the results could best reach potential end-users outside of the BOUNCE consortium. The market for predictive algorithms designed for clinical settings is still underdeveloped. Therefore, the market and business sustainability analysis currently conducted in BOUNCE will pave the way for other similar projects and innovations in the future.