In line with this ambition, the overall goal of this topic is to develop an online platform targeting, adolescents, and young adult (AYA) cancer patients and survivors (age 15-39, age of first diagnosis) to address specifically their mental health needs, throughout their journey, at diagnosis, during and after treatment. In particular:

• The digital platform should be developed as a module to be fully integrated within the European Cancer Patient Digital Centre whose information portal is currently under development (project EU-CIP). Clear links with EU-CIP should therefore be established and solutions developed to link the two projects, including operational solutions and sustainability.
• The platform should include a mix of innovative personalized, evidence-based, and interactive features building on state-of-the-art research to address the mental health needs of AYA patients and survivors. Both cognitive (thinking, reasoning, memory, perceptual etc.), affective (depression, anxiety, etc.), and behaviour change aspects should be considered.
• The innovative nature of proposed solutions should be clearly demonstrated.
• Multi-device compatibility (mobile, tablet, web) and multilingual support to reach diverse populations should be included.
• Specific needs and potential solutions should be discussed and developed in close cooperation with end-users.
• Similarly, the efficacy of the proposed solutions to support and boost mental health of young cancer patients, survivors and their caregivers should be demonstrated by testing and validating them by an appropriate number of end users, with different cancer types and belonging to the targeted age group.
• Develop, test and integrate in the platform innovative tools for collection and analysis of mental health relevant Patient Reported Outcomes Measures (PROMs) and Patient Reported Experiences Measures (PREMs). Effective mining of lived experience data should be enabled to support for example psychometric development and validation, risk modelling, and the co-creation of personalized psychological measures of mental health.
• Therefore tools should be developed and validated in close cooperation with end-users including patients, survivors, healthcare professionals and researchers.
• Develop European Health Data Space (EHDS) aligned guidelines to report and deposit relevant patient reported data collected with the above tools.
• Projects should include an appropriate mix of stakeholders from various disciplines and sectors, including but not limited to physicians, psychologists, nurses, academia, patients and their caregivers, patient representatives, behavioural scientists, cancer survivorship scientists, AI-experts and solutions providers, SMEs, charities and funding agencies, and research organisations.
• Direct involvement of cancer patients and survivors, survivor representative organisations, caregivers is required, along with effective contribution of Social Science and Humanities (SSH) disciplines and the involvement of SSH experts, institutions as well as the inclusion of relevant SSH expertise, in order to produce meaningful and significant results, enhancing the impact of the proposed activities.
• Due consideration should be given to initiatives such as: EU-CAYAS-NET; ERN PaedCan, Pancare EUonQoL, e-Quol and other relevant initiatives, including projects funded under the EU Cancer Mission topic HORIZON-MISS-2024-CANCER-01-05: Improving the understanding and management of late-effects in adolescents and young adults (AYA) with cancer.

Successful proposals will be asked to join the ‘Quality of life” cluster for the EU Cancer Mission and should include a budget for networking, attendance at meetings, and joint activities. The Commission will facilitate coordination of these activities.