The scale of the underlying problem is sobering. According to the World Health Organization, cancer is the second leading cause of death globally, with roughly 20 million new cases diagnosed in 2022, a figure expected to climb in the coming years. Pediatric cancers, though representing about one percent of global diagnoses, are also rising, with an estimated 13.7 million new cases of childhood cancer projected between 2020 and 2050. Each of those diagnoses ripples outward to parents, siblings, partners, and friends, many of whom take on informal caregiving roles with little psychological support of their own.

Receiving a potentially life-threatening diagnosis can trigger significant psychological and cognitive challenges that touch nearly every domain of personal life. If left unaddressed, this burden can erode well-being and quality of life, and can even undermine adherence to treatment itself. Psychological distress shapes how clearly patients think, how confident they feel in managing their illness, how they communicate with clinicians, how they perceive risk, and ultimately how they make some of the most consequential decisions of their lives. In other words, mental health is not a luxury add-on to cancer care; it is woven into the machinery of treatment outcomes.

Psycho-oncological interventions, when they are available, can support people of all ages, foster adherence to clinical recommendations, and help surface patients’ preferences and needs throughout the care pathway. Clinical practice guidelines already recommend psychological assessment not only at diagnosis but at multiple phases of the illness, because emotional and cognitive burden shifts over time and varies with psychological factors and age. The problem is delivery. Access to psycho-oncological support is limited across healthcare systems for structural reasons, including resource constraints and the insufficient integration of psychological care into routine oncological pathways. Individual-level barriers compound the problem: low awareness of available services, stigma, shame, perceived discrimination, and wide heterogeneity in patients’ perceived needs and help-seeking attitudes.

There is also a blind spot in the guidelines themselves. Most clinical practice guidelines focus primarily on adult populations, with comparatively limited attention to pediatric patients and informal caregivers, precisely the groups whose psychological needs can be most easily overlooked. It is against this backdrop that the ALTHEA project, whose full name expands to tAckling menTal Health cancer patients and their families: digital solutions for bEtter cAre, has taken shape. Co-funded by the European Union’s EU4Health Programme under grant agreement number 101161236, the project brings together an unusually broad coalition: oncologists, health psychologists, neuropsychologists, pediatric cancer specialists, nursing scientists, computer scientists, patient advocacy organizations, and European cancer policy bodies spanning countries from Italy and Germany to Ukraine, Lithuania, Cyprus, and beyond.

The centerpiece of the project is a novel web-based digital platform designed to serve both cancer patients and their informal caregivers across different stages of the care pathway, and to be available to healthcare professionals as well. The platform’s architecture rests on three integrated functions. The first is psychological and cognitive assessment: a unique testing battery will be developed for both pediatric and adult patients and informal caregivers, drawing on clinical practice guidelines, care guidelines, and existing validated tests and self-reported measures. The second function is support profile identification, and the third is the delivery of tailored psychological support and educational material, including resources that equip healthcare professionals to navigate mental health issues in oncology and to refer patients to specialized psycho-oncologists and neuropsychologists when needed.

The support profile system is where the platform’s technical ambition becomes most visible. Based on the results of the psychological and cognitive assessments, and taking into account what the consortium calls complexity indicators, psychosocial vulnerability factors that sharpen the specificity of the final classification, each user is assigned to one of four profiles corresponding to progressively higher levels of intervention intensity. Profile 0 users are invited to follow-up and ongoing reassessment through the screening module, so that early changes in psychosocial status can be detected. Profile 1 users receive general educational materials, self-help content, and digital interventions designed to support psychological adjustment and promote adaptive coping strategies, alongside continued reassessment. Profile 2 users receive self-help content, tailored educational materials, digital interventions, and guided professional support delivered through the platform by psycho-oncologists, health psychologists, and neuropsychologists, targeting issues such as emotional distress, sleep quality, and cognitive functioning in line with clinical best practice. Profile 3 users, those with the most complex needs, are referred to specialized care with personalized recommendations for integrated support, ensuring timely access to appropriate specialists.

What distinguishes ALTHEA from existing digital health platforms, its developers argue, is the combination of screening, classification into support profiles, and tailored interventions within a single platform, together with a co-creation approach that actively involves patients, caregivers, and healthcare professionals in its design. The development process will be grounded in the scientific literature and in data collected directly from end-users, an attempt to ensure the platform reflects real needs rather than assumptions about them. The consortium is also explicit about the risks. Digital solutions can overcome traditional barriers to access, but they can also generate new forms of inequality, for instance through uneven accessibility among countries. Some people, particularly older adults with lower levels of digital literacy, may be less inclined to engage with an online platform at all, and building a tool for heterogeneous populations requires the inclusion of a wide range of participant groups throughout the process to ensure the validity of its contents.

To counteract these risks, the authors outline a set of design and implementation strategies: inclusive design, multilingual interfaces, culturally adapted content, and careful prioritization of resources. Features such as gamification, easily accessible content, and low-bandwidth solutions may further enhance the platform’s ability to deliver tailored interventions and sustain user engagement across diverse populations. Crucially, the project treats people with lived experience of cancer not merely as study participants but as co-creators and advisors, an approach the consortium says enhances the platform’s relevance, usability, acceptability, and ethical foundation. Algorithm-based approaches to matching patients with support levels are described as promising, though the authors are candid that further empirical validation is needed to establish their effectiveness and generalisability.

If it delivers on its promise, the consortium argues, ALTHEA could contribute to more accessible and integrated psycho-oncological care by easing the incorporation of psychological support into routine clinical pathways, supporting early identification of psychological needs through structured screening, and improving access to tailored interventions across diverse populations. It may also inform more standardized approaches to mental health assessment in oncology and help build more equitable, scalable models of care. For now, the team is careful about what remains to be proven: future research will be essential to evaluate the platform’s clinical effectiveness, scalability, implementation in real-world settings, and its impact on clinical outcomes. But in a field where millions of patients and families navigate cancer’s psychological toll with inadequate support, the ambition of a single platform that screens, classifies, and responds to mental health needs across the entire cancer journey represents a significant step toward making the mind an equal partner with the body in cancer care.

Subject of Research: A digital mental health platform for cancer patients and their families

Article Title: Digital solutions for tackling mental health in cancer patients and their families: The ALTHEA project

Article References: Durosini, I., Monzani, D., Coppini, V., Ferrari, M. V., Bovolenta, C., Grigis, A., Curigliano, G., Zagami, P., Munzone, E., Minchella, I., Magnoni, F., Peccatori, F. A., Scholl, I., Meyerheim, M., Van Hemelrijck, M., Gsell, H., Gosak, L., Ciria-Suarez, L., Làvo, K., … the ALTHEA Consortium (2026). Digital solutions for tackling mental health in cancer patients and their families: The ALTHEA project. PLOS Digital Health, 5(10), e0001675. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pdig.0001675

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pdig.0001675

Keywords: digital health, psycho-oncology, cancer care, mental health screening, caregivers, ALTHEA project, EU4Health, clinical guidelines, patient empowerment, co-creation, telemedicine, healthcare inequality