Partner interview: Norbert Graf of University of Saarland

What is your name, position, and where do you work?

My name is Norbert Graf. I am Professor for Pediatrics and Director of the Department for Pediatric Oncology and Hematology at the Saarland University, Germany.

How long have you been working in your current position?

I have based in Homburg, Germany at the Saarland University for more than 30 years.

What is your role and what work do you do within the iManageCancer project?

I am one of the clinical partners in the iManageCancer project. USAAR is leading WP2 and also WP9. In that respect USAAR is responsible for defining the concept of iManageCancer and elaborating on the system requirements in an iterative process with all the other partners. This work builds the basis for all the other work packages. In WP9, USAAR is developing a pilot for children with cancer to evaluate the iManageCancer platform in this area. This also includes a serious game for children, which will be created and set-up mainly by partner Serious Games Solutions GmbH. Most important for the project will be the evaluation of the platform under a clinical perspective.

How does your work relate to the work of other partners?

As mentioned above, there is a lot of interaction with all of the other partners of the project. This starts with the definition of requirements and the concept of the platform, goes onto defining a serious game for children, developing a pilot, evaluating the platform and integrated tools and ends with exploitation and dissemination to achieve maintenance and sustainability. Work is coordinated through many regular telephone conferences, email exchanges and meetings. After the first year of the project I can really emphasize that this collective work is not only fruitful, efficient and very effective but also gives pleasure to all of us.

What do you think the biggest challenges will be for your work throughout the project?

The biggest challenge in the project is to get it running in terms of sustainability and maintenance. We need to demonstrate that our project helps patients to self-manage their disease in different aspects and that patients having tested the platform will want to use the services in the future. This will, as one of our goals, foster patient empowerment and hopefully increase patient satisfaction and a better communication with treating physicians. A main pillar to get trust by patients will to guarantee data protection and privacy of their data entered into the platform. Therefore a legal and ethical framework is set up and the whole project will be transparent to end-users.

What do you expect will be one of the most interesting things to come out the project once it has finished?

For me the most interesting fact will be how fast the number of users will increase after we have demonstrated clear benefits of iManageCancer to patients. It will be of interest to me what tools they use the most and what their feedback will be for further improvements of the platform. If we achieve a fast acceptance of the platform, then we are successful and the project will maintain itself for sure.