mResist

In the European Union, around 5 million people suffer from psychotic disorders, being schizophrenia one of the most widely-known. Around 30-50% patients are considered treatment-resistant and present persistent symptoms, requiring long periods of hospital care and being at greater risk of mortality and multi morbidity. During the 3 years of the project, a model of analysis will be implemented, in order to move forward in understanding resistant schizophrenia.

m-Resist project aims to develop an innovative disease management system, m-RESIST, a mobile ICT system addressed to empower patients suffering from resistant schizophrenia, which will involve them to actively participate in the therapeutic process and will enable them to self-manage their condition. m-RESIST will become a step forward in improving and optimizing the clinical decision process.

To date, standard treatment is not enough to achieve remission in resistant schizophrenic patients. Therefore, an improved understanding of treatment refractory schizophrenia and the development of innovative evidence-based interventions adjunctive to pharmacological and psychosocial treatment are necessary.

Besides, project activities will help to predict patient’s behaviour and to allow the establishment of a reaction alert system, as well as to draw up protocols and recommendations to give doctors support in the clinical decisions. By linking data mining tools with a high-level predictive model, m-RESIST will bring forth a new technical focus for health treatments, which will allow the behaviour patterns found in many patient data to be analysed in order to identify the risks and shortcomings of the treatments.

Intervention strategies based on m-Health have demonstrated their ability to support and promote selfmanagement-based strategies. In case of resistant schizophrenic patients, an intervention programme based on m-Health could offer a holistic approach to:

• Integrate psychiatric and psychological assistance with other medical health-carers.
• Better monitor patients with resistant schizophrenia through a personalised and optimised therapeutic process.
• Promote acceptance and self-management of disease and comorbidities.
• Potentiate involvement of patients and their caregivers in therapeutic process.

For more information visit http://www.mresist.eu