Values

The COTIDIANA consortium is creating a highly innovative solution that is not free from ethical challenges. To promote an appropriate environment for patients and their clinicians we subscribe to the following principles:

• Patient-centred - the consortium of COTIDIANA is working to ensure that our product is patient-centred in practice, and not only in theory. We are promoting participatory processes and involving patients in all phases of the design process. The COTIDIANA solution is bundled with features that support patients in practical terms, such as medication reminders, tips about their rheumatic condition, or plots displaying the collected data. Rather than being prescriptive or corrective, the COTIDIANA solution will be informative and supportive, recognising patients face multiple competing challenges when living with a chronic condition. This approach will help ensure patients perspectives are included.
  

• Care-focused - our team has studied rheumatology care processes and engaged in co-design with clinicians to make sure the COTIDIANA solution respects clinical care trajectories and contributes to rich patient-clinician interactions. Clinicians will have a web app where they can analyse patient data and reflect with the patient about it. Our goal is to enable patients and clinicians to bring more issues to discussion and to work in complement with clinical processes and services that already work well.
  

• Minimal time impact - our consortium will minimize the work required from patients in using the system, to enable them to attend to their family, their work, or their other commitments. As much as possible, we will minimise interruptions and survey questions, drawing on smartphone sensors and logs to collect data about the patients’ condition, passively.
  

• Privacy and security by design - the COTIDIANA solution collects data about people’s patterns and habits, such as communication or typing patterns, which can be quite sensitive. To ensure privacy, all collected data is processed, aggregated, and merged, enabling clinicians to detect aggravation trends while protecting the privacy of patients’ habits. The COTIDIANA consortium is committed to patients’ privacy and will not sell or share patient data with third-party institutions, such as insurance companies. Patients’ data will only be accessible to them and their clinician(s). Finally, we will adopt latest security standards and procedures, ensuring patient data is kept safe, and, in the unlikely event that security is breached, patient’s privacy is protected.
  

• High usability - the COTIDIANA solution will only impact patients’ lives if people can actually use it, so the consortium is co-designing and iteratively testing the system with patients. Real-world validations, focused on usability, user experience, and impact, will further inform the development of the system, making sure it fits’ patients lives.