A European project led from Málaga tests breast cancer follow-up in primary care

Topics Regional Government of Andalusia

Hospital Universitario Costa del Sol and IBIMA Plataforma BIONAND take part in WISH, an international study that will assess whether women with early breast cancer on hormonal treatment can be followed up from primary care with a mobile app instead of at the hospital.

Javier C. · Published on October 21, 2026 at 23:15

Málaga — File image. Photo: Viktar Palstsiuk / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The WISH project will study whether the follow-up of women with early HER2-negative, estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer receiving adjuvant hormonal treatment can move from the hospital to primary care. Today that follow-up is managed by the hospital's oncology team, which according to the project leaders has limited capacity to handle the complexity of this clinical process.

An app for follow-up

The central tool is a mobile app with which patients will record how they feel and report adverse effects, so that they can be addressed quickly. The app will also make it possible to propose personalised lifestyle guidelines. The goal is for the patient, the family doctor and the oncologist to share the follow-up through a collaborative network. To verify this, a randomised, multicentre, international trial has been designed that will compare follow-up with WISH against usual care. The primary measure will be that quality of life at 12 months is not lower than with standard follow-up, assessed with the FACT-B questionnaire. Time to detection of toxicity, time to intervention and the cost-effectiveness ratio will also be measured. Patients will be randomly assigned to one model or the other according to the centre, the type of surgery (breast-conserving or mastectomy) and whether they live in an urban or rural setting.

Fewer inequalities and more data

Remote monitoring seeks to reduce health inequalities by guaranteeing close follow-up of all patients, including those living in rural areas and those most likely to abandon treatment. Data analysis and artificial intelligence will help health policy makers anticipate health problems and identify how diseases progress.

Who takes part

The project is funded by the Consejería de Presidencia, Sanidad y Emergencias of the Junta de Andalucía, within the framework of the 2025 joint call of Transforming Health and Care Systems (THCS) and the Horizon Europe programme. Its national reference is HOR-2026-09 and it runs from April 2026 to March 2029. IBIMA Plataforma BIONAND takes part as a partner, with the Translational Research and Health Outcomes in Cancer and Chronic Diseases group, and the implementation centre is Hospital Universitario Costa del Sol. Coordination corresponds to Istituti Clinici Scientifici Maugeri (Italy) and the consortium is completed by the University of Pavia (Italy), the University of Klaipeda (Lithuania), the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), the Haute Ecole Spécialisée de Suisse Occidentale (HES-SO) and Arx iT Consulting (Switzerland).