The iLIVE Project is now entering the most exciting phase of its work. With the bases for each of the Work Packages already fully stablished after the testing phases, and once the approval of the ethical committees has been obtained, the work has moved this year on to the most important part, with the collection of data and their statistical management for subsequent analysis. At the last Consortium Meeting, held online in October, the different working groups began to evaluate the first data collected and set the pace of the tasks for the coming months, which will be crucial to achieve the project's objectives. The start of the work has been promising. The Cohort Study is now up and running in all participating countries. This part of the study is one of the most important parts, as it will provide a complete set of data regarding Palliative Care in the last days of life. Hundreds of people will have contributed their input and ideas by the end of the project. This study is still recruiting patients, families and healthcare professionals in order to get as broad a picture as possible of the needs and expectations of each of the groups surveyed. It is still too early to start offering conclusions on the data collected, but this first insight offers a very promising start for our study. Thanks to these data we will be able to offer a new management of Palliative Care units and the management of chronic and terminal illnesses. The Meeting provided a setting to discuss the best strategies to recruit patients, relatives and professionals for the study.
The work with the Volunteer's Study is also well advanced. After the training sessions that were already carried out to set up the volunteer groups, work enters now a more decisive phase, with the setting up of the groups themselves in the different teams as expected. This phase has had to be delayed due to the special situation that the pandemic has created in healthcare establishments and the restrictions it has entailed. But now that the pandemic has entered a more controlled phase, work with volunteers can resume. The ultimate goal is to measure the impact of the presence of volunteers on the well-being not only of the patients themselves, but also of healthcare workers and family members. In this way, once we stablished their benefits, a standardized and proven model for forming volunteer teams will be established, maximizing the benefits. The medication study is also progressing despite the difficulties of the pandemic worldwide. In this case, we are counting on the collaboration of medical professionals to better understand the effects of the different medications and optimize their use. At the end of the project, we will have a digital tool to assist in medication management. The working group is also about to start the most important part of the data collection, so it will also soon be fully operational.
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