Mission

Enhancing chemotherapy, with innovative methods

Due to its high prevalence, and the expected increase in its incidence (https://www.wcrf.org), cancer poses a significant societal challenge nowadays. Chemotherapy offers a crucial advancement in terms of the patients’ chances of cure and survival. However, it presents not only physical but also psychological side effects, with the latter being linked – among other factors – to the extended duration of each treatment session. Containing these side effects is key to promote the patient’s mental well-being, which in turn would encourage and increase adherence to the treatment 

The time required by each chemotherapy session cannot yet be reduced objectively. However, this difficulty can be circumvented by acting on how time is perceived subjectively – which is what TIMELAPSE proposes to achieve using a dedicated VR application. 

Different from previous experimentations, TIMELAPSE will pursue this idea by: 

• Relying on theoretical models specifically related to the manipulation of time passage, i.e. the dimension of time perception that is most strictly connected to the emotional dimension of a given experience; 
• Adopting a participatory and patient-centered design approach, which will innovatively incorporate in the conception of the VR application the irreplaceable perspective of its specific end-users; this will include firstly the oncologic patients, but also their caregivers and the clinical staff taking care of them. 

These choices, made at R&D level, will reflect on the production stage, giving rise to a product with no comparable precedents.