➡️What will be the digital and digital non-clinical solutions for people with cancer in the future 🧐
This post aims to consider some possible digital solutions to bring medical resources and information to patients in the future.
➡️📱Mobile Apps: Mobile cancer apps can play a crucial role in patient education, symptom management and treatment monitoring.
These apps could provide information about cancer, medications, side effects, proper diets, as well as reminders for medications and medical appointments.
➡️⌨️Connected objects and wearables:
Wearable devices such as smart watches, bracelets and monitoring sensors could be used to monitor the vital signs of cancer patients in real time.
➡️Artificial Intelligence
(Al) and Data
Analytics: Al can be used to analyze large amounts of medical data and help identify patterns, correlations and predictions. This could contribute to a better understanding of risk factors,
treatment responses and patient
outcomes.
➡️Virtual Reality (VR):
Virtual reality can be used to help cancer
patients manage pain, anxiety and stress. Calming and interactive virtual environments can be created to distract patients during medical treatments or to help them relax during difficult times
For more just read: E-Health4Cancer : Sharing good practices in the use of nonclinical e-health solutions for cancer patients and their caregivers in Europe. Non-profit Organizations
When Carly Flumer was a teenager, she was diagnosed with anxiety and depression. She saw a psychiatrist and a therapist regularly, and got medication and counseling. She managed her mental health well for over a decade. But in January 2017, she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of thyroid cancer that had spread to her lymph nodes by the time it was diagnosed.
That’s when things got complicated again.
Flumer, then 27, underwent surgery to remove her thyroid. She also received intensive radiation. To all observers, she got a clean bill of health — at least with regard to her cancer. But, she says, her mental health had suffered.
“People absolutely do not understand the panic a cancer diagnosis can cause,” Flumer says. “My depression and anxiety got worse when I got diagnosed. I also have had more suicidal thoughts because of the cancer,” she says. “The side effects of treatment are real. So is the stress of waiting to see if the cancer comes back again.”
In the first-ever report of its kind, the WHO Council on the Economics of Health for All has outlined a bold new path to reorient economies to deliver what matters – health for all.
The Council has put forward a bold new narrative grounded in new economic wisdom to reorient economies to deliver health for all across four interrelated themes:
Value – valuing and measuring what matters through new economic metrics;
Finance – how to finance health for all as a long-term investment, not a short-term cost;
Innovation – how to advance health innovation for the common good;
Capacity – how to strengthen dynamic public sector capacity to achieve health for all.
The appointments of Fleming and Yende underscore the profound link between arts and health. Engagement in creative activities, such as music, art, and dance, positively impacts physical, mental health, social well-being, and overall quality of life.
Through their roles as Goodwill Ambassadors, Fleming and Yende will promote the integration of arts into healthcare systems, advocate for access to creative arts therapies, and champion the importance of artistic expression in improving health outcomes globally.
As the world faces ongoing health and humanitarian emergencies, the Seventy-sixth World Health Assembly focuses on driving forward health for all. This year’s session of the World Health Assembly determines the immediate and longer-term future of WHO, starting with the program budget for the next two years, key decisions about the sustainable financing of the Organization and changes put in place to improve WHO’s processes and accountability. Delegates also deliberate about the critical role that WHO has in the Global Health Emergency Architecture.
Having lived in Cyprus for the last decade, I’ve invested an incredible amount of time into learning to speak Greek–with, I am sad to report, only modest success. All those hours conjugating verbs and wondering why one language could possibly need 12 versions of “the” definitely helps me communicate with friends, family, and supermarket checkout clerks. But I sometimes wonder, given there are only 12 million Greek speakers in the world and the fact that I have a business to run, was this really the best use of so much of my energy and time?
Linguists and psychologists insist that learning foreign terms broadens the array of words we can use to describe the world around us and our reactions to it. Which isn’t just handy for communication. Being able to more accurately describe your feelings and experiences actually helps you understand and control your emotions. A richer vocabulary leads to more emotional and practical smarts.
“Emotional granularity [aka having the exact right term for a feeling] helps your brain figure out when to act … and what to do,” neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett explains. So which ancient Greek terms help us pinpoint and respond to important aspects of modern life? Classical Wisdom lists a dozen, but three struck me as particularly useful.
1. Eudaimonia
In English we lean heavily on the word “happiness” when we want to convey an overall sense of contentment. But psychologists say the word is problematic; there are several different types of happiness. There is the momentary joy of pleasant sensations–the kind of happiness you get from eating a slice of cake. And then there is the overall feeling of accomplishment that comes from a life well lived, which researchers–if not laypeople–generally distinguish by using the term “life satisfaction.”
As Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman has pointed out, these two types of happiness are often in tension. You need to give up a lot of cake and leisurely days to experience the broader life satisfaction that comes from completing your first marathon or building a successful business.
This might be a distinction everyday English struggles to express, but ancient Greek provided a word to convey the larger sense of overall life satisfaction. “Eudaimonia is regularly translated as happiness or welfare; however, ‘human flourishing or prosperity’ and ‘blessedness’ have been proposed as more accurate translations. In Aristotle’s works, eudaimonia was used as the term for the highest human good,” explains Classical Wisdom.
Having a word that conveys the idea of this higher happiness — the sum total of a life well lived and the peace and satisfaction it brings — and reminds us of the sacrifices it generally takes to achieve could help us all navigate the complex tradeoffs of modern life.
2. Arete
“Arete in its basic sense, means ‘excellence of any kind.’ The term may also mean ‘moral virtue.’ In its earliest appearance in Greek, this notion of excellence was ultimately bound up with the notion of the fulfillment of purpose or function: the act of living up to one’s full potential,” explains Classical Wisdom.
Why might this be a useful word to know even if you’re not planning to translate Homer anytime soon? People throughout the ages have wondered what to chase in life. Many today strive to be “successful.” But how do you measure success? Usually by looking at whether you’re doing better than your neighbor or work rival. And there is always someone with a bigger bank balance or fancier title than you. You can never get off the treadmill, and the constant running makes a lot of people miserable.
So how about chasing arete instead? Aiming for excellence and making the most of your talents, is a more surefire route to outer impact and inner peace than chasing success.
3. Aidos
I don’t think I’m going to have to say a lot to convince you that aidos is a concept the modern world is in desperate need of.
Aidos is “that feeling of reverence or shame which restrains men and women from wrong. It also encompassed the emotion that a rich person might feel in the presence of the impoverished, that their disparity of wealth, whether a matter of luck or merit, was ultimately undeserved. Ancient and Christian humility have some common points, they are both the rejection of egotism and self-centeredness, arrogance and excessive pride, and is a recognition of human limitations. Aristotle defined it as a middle ground between vanity and cowardice,” says Classical Wisdom.
Less ego and a greater appreciation for the role of luck in success would make for a more pleasant and compassionate society. But even if you’re not interested in a kinder world (and you really should be), intellectual humility helps you learn faster, listen better, and be smarter. Aidos, which encompasses both the precariousness of good fortune and the possibility of error, is a quality that’s in conspiculously short supply in our divided society.
If you’re fascinated by these ancient Greek concepts and how they illuminate modern life, check out Classical Wisdom for many more.
