Current trends in electronic family resilience tools: Implementing a tool for the cancer domain

Abstract

It is well documented that the diagnosis of cancer affects the wellbeing of the whole family adding overwhelming stresses and uncertainties. As such, family education and enhancement of resilience is an important factor that should be promoted and facilitated in a holistic manner for addressing a severe and chronic condition such as cancer. In this paper, we review the notion of resilience in the literature identifying three tools that try to support it. Then we focus in the cancer domain and we describe a tool implemented to this direction. To our knowledge, this is the first time such a tool is used to complete patient profile with family resilience information, eventually leading to patient and family engagement and empowerment.