CHOICE

CHOICE — Comprehensive Health Options and Information for Cancer Education

The CHOICE project addresses the very high lifetime risk of breast cancer faced by women carrying BRCA1/BRCA2 mutations—estimated at up to 72%—and the persistent gap between the availability of preventive options and their real-world uptake, which is hampered by misconceptions, emotional distress and low health literacy. The project will empower patients and equip healthcare professionals with evidence-based, culturally sensitive, and literacy-level–adapted educational resources and decision-support tools so that women can make genuinely informed choices about surveillance and risk‑reducing interventions.

CHOICE brings together expertise in cancer prevention, data science, digital health and patient education from four core partners and eight support organisations in Portugal, Czechia and Greece. It will develop multilingual educational materials, a virtual library, a BRCA-focused health literacy dictionary, AI-powered interactive decision-making tools (including “virtual patients”), and a health literacy algorithm to be exposed through an open API for integration into digital health platforms. Quantitative and qualitative methods, public sentiment analysis and broader data-science techniques will be employed to characterise barriers, needs and decision processes among BRCA carriers across different healthcare systems.

The project is fully aligned with EU4Health priorities and Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan, explicitly targeting improved health literacy for citizens and professionals, equitable access to reliable information, and structured EU-level dissemination and sustainability pathways (e.g., open-source API, interoperable tools, a CHOICE Coalition for long-term advocacy and knowledge exchange).

Partnership: NOVA IMS is the coordinator and involves a diverse consortium of institutions: Institute of Biostatistics and Analyses Ltd. (IBA) (CZ), Masaryk University (MU) (CZ), and the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH) (GR).

The consortium is further strengthened by a robust network of associated partners, including national health organizations, patient advocacy groups, and research networks across the three countries, ensuring the project's outputs are practical, relevant, and aligned with both national and EU health priorities.

As the project coordinator, NOVA IMS provides strategic leadership and is responsible for the overall scientific and administrative management, ensuring the project meets its objectives on time and within budget. Leveraging our deep expertise in data science, artificial intelligence, and behavioural analysis, we lead the technical innovation at the core of the project.

Our team is responsible for developing the project's primary data-driven tools, including a sophisticated health literacy algorithm and an API designed to integrate seamlessly into existing healthcare platforms. We will also create a multilingual health literacy dictionary and a virtual library by applying advanced machine learning and natural language processing techniques to analyse vast amounts of data from online interactions and public health forums. These tools will generate real-time insights into patient needs and sentiment, forming the evidence base for the educational and decision-support resources developed by the consortium. Furthermore, we will steer the project's sustainability and exploitation strategies to ensure its innovations have a lasting impact on healthcare systems across Europe.

• Funder: European Commission
• Funding Programme: EU4Health Programme (Grant Agreement: No. 101219225)
• Funding to NOVA IMS: €317,750
• Duration: June 2025 - May 2028