Chronic illness is the most prevalent health condition in Europe. The WHO (2010) defines it as a long-term illness, usually of slow progression, requiring prolonged multi-professional monitoring, usually associated with the use of medication and/or equipment of more or less complex use. It is also a condition affecting personal, family, and professional life, thus requiring the reformulation of previously adopted self-care behaviours.

The disease control goals set by health professionals diverge from people’s desire to maintain a life compatible with their life goals. This aspect is pointed out as one of the reasons contributing to the ineffectiveness of conventional therapeutic strategies. Hence, the need emerges to promote people’s self-care and disease self-management so they can live their life while adhering to the therapeutic indications and monitoring and controlling their chronic disease.

In line with this goal, this project aims to develop software applications for monitoring and controlling the management of the therapeutic regimen in people with chronic disease, using a smartphone as a platform to strengthen communication between patients and health professionals. The applications are intended to favour adherence to therapeutic indications, monitor symptoms and complications, improve health literacy, and respond in a timely and proactive manner to symptoms or complications that may arise associated with the disease, thus improving people’s health and quality of life.

This project has three ongoing modules:

Module 1 – iGestHealth: Chemotherapy – subproject aimed at people with oncological disease undergoing chemotherapy or immunotherapy treatment to promote self-management processes to deal with symptoms at home;

Module 2 – iGestHealth: Diabetes – aimed at people with type 2 diabetes mellitus involving patients and a multidisciplinary team of health professionals throughout the process towards the management of their therapeutic regimen;

Module 3 – iGestHealth: Mental illness – aimed at people with mental illness, namely with depressive disorders, monitoring and supporting the process of self-management of the illness and therapeutic regimen.