The demographic changes, and the digitalized information society, present challenges across borders and across Europe. Therefore we will have to deal not only with a rising number of elderly patients and growing demands on the health system, but also with a new generation of patients. They will want to take an active part in their health management and in the choice and actual form of their therapy. One of the future challenges will be to create tools that can inform and activate patients and enable them to carry out forms of self-management.

In our digital information era, patients expect more intensive information and education than before, about prevention, their clinical picture, and their therapy options. They want to be able to meet doctors on eye level as Empowered Patients. In the last few decades this was hardly ever the case. The aim is not just to anticipate the new attitude of patients, but to actively promote it, because well-informed patients are in a much better position to cooperate in diagnosis, therapy and recovery. Digital media like the internet, apps, the boom of smartphones and tablets show that health information strategies must adapt to the new situation.

At the moment medical information for patients is mostly offered in the form of paper-based flyers and brochures. Online information lacks clarity and structure, and is difficult to evaluate. Moreover, new media like adaptive and interactive apps, videos etc., allow for more effective and individualized information with visual elements for patients and their families who dispose of varied medical knowledge. These media can help patients prepare specifically for the doctor consultation. Moreover, innovative instruments, so-called self-monitoring and self-tracking apps are used to enable patients to document and communicate their individual symptoms, observations and questions pre and post treatment. Thus MDs are offered the chance to create a more detailed clinical picture and can better evaluate the efficiency of the therapy during follow-up. Data can be collected, represented graphically, and called on more easily, to be used to effectively support the therapy. Up to now we have little suitable material and only few studies. There are practically no adaptive information apps or clinical apps accompanying treatment.

This project is to develop innovative adaptive multi-media tools in collaboration with patients, their families, and doctors. It is essential for patients and doctors not just to test these tools, but to be implicated in their development from the start, so as to create participatory user-driven innovation. To support the process of co-creation, Living Labs will be established.

The project aims at producing the following effects: expertly informed empowered patients who understand their clinical picture and know which therapy options exist, patients who can optimally prepare for interviews with doctors, patients who can use self-monitoring tools to actively support their own treatment including diagnosis and follow-up documentation, family members who know how to understand and better support patients, MDs with a new understanding of their work, able to meet well-informed patients on the same level, and to confront health problems together with the patients as a team.

In order to reach these aims the following measures are to be employed: researching and interviewing doctors, patients, and family members, developing guidelines, establishing co-creation installations, aka Living Labs, developing suitable information tools, such as apps, adaptive videos, etc., for urologic and oncological patient groups, developing self-monitoring tools for oncology and urology patients, developing training material for doctors and medical staff to improve competences in shared therapy decision making methods.

In the case of PROMETHEUS cross-border collaboration is especially sensible, as the expenses of development can be shared, and apps can be used in both languages. They can be tested in different cultural settings, resulting in pronounced synergy effects. This is a win-win situation for both sides, especially in light of possible quatro-helix cooperation. The two countries share high levels of education, scientific excellence, and high medical expertise as well as wide-spread use of digital media, so that a large number of open-minded and suitable patients can be counted on. Possibly we will find differences as to preferences and acceptance of new methods. In this relatively new field, it is cross-border cooperation that will provide us with a broader experience and more intensive exchange of information and experience, furthering the development of existing scientific excellence.