Genome and epigenome profiling and large-scale molecular profiling are redefining both the way cancers are categorized and, increasingly, the way they are being treated, as molecular alterations are emerging as powerful prognostic markers and targets. Rules are emerging for analysis of treatment outcomes are analysed, and molecular targets are being used to ensure an increased quality of life for the patients. But availability is not the same as accessibility. Many children, adolescents and adults around the EU still receive inadequate diagnosis, treatment and support.

The evolution across the EU is uneven in its pace and scope – a diversity echoed too in the capabilities of distinct healthcare systems to respond to other healthcare challenges, and most recently, the Covid pandemic.

Against this background as part of CAN.HEAL, the European Cancer Patient Coalition and the EAPM are organising a European stakeholder conference on April 26th and 27th in Rome on the key issues that could be tackled to bring ‘access and diagnostics for all’ and public health genomics into healthcare systems.

Please click here to view the agenda and and click here to register.

Integrating ‘access and diagnostics for all’ as well as Public Health Genomics into clinical practice in Europe will allow unmet needs to be more effectively tackled – but only if a more comprehensive implementation strategy can be forged, focused on patients, and involving national decision makers, regulators, healthcare professionals and all stakeholders in the healthcare arena. There are responsibilities at all levels to be met by all stakeholders, and a wider readiness to engage in more meaningful collaboration will be crucial to success. The hope is that this meeting will feed into the many other activities supporting the goal of better use of personalized medicine for the benefit of patients and wider society.

The hope is that this stakeholder event on April 26^th/27th will feed into the many other activities supporting the goal of better use of personalized medicine for the benefit of patients and wider society.

Thed speakers reflected in the upcoming stakeholder event is evident of the wider domains too, as well as wide geographies and initiatives, demonstrating new thinking in the approaches to diagnosis and treatment of cancer patients, with novel degrees of attention to data, to reporting, to analyse and to public health genomics – and that also highlight persistent methodological inadequacies that need to be addressed in order for patients, and particularly young patients as well as rare cancer patients, to be even better served by healthcare providers.

The reasons for this gap are numerous, but as one concrete step towards identifying key factors, is the CAN.HEAL project as well as the Stakeholder conference on April 26^th/27th.

The conference will offer practical insights into a wide range of specific challenges in oncology, along with recommendations for possible remedies.

The stakeholder conference is based in part on responses to the stakeholder’s community at the EU, national and regional level, regarding the challenges, and opportunities provided by the EU Beating Cancer Plan regarding the diagnosis and treatment of cancer patients.

Under the title of " Reducing Disparities Across the European Union’, the conference provides an unique consensus on the on-the-ground realities, and at the same time offers expert commentary on the significance for cancer care of the political, economic and social context for health policy decision-making.

On the threshold of Easter and as we approach a new legislative period, when the position of health on the EU agenda, which we hope will remain high, and when researchers, regulators, the healthcare professions are becoming ever more closely engaged in the policy issues fundamental to health, this conference is particularly apt. It encapsulates how much has been done and is being done to improve the quality of cancer care, and exposes sharply how much remains to be done.

Science has shown pathways that can lead to success, but as ever, politics and investment need to be linked together for the potential to be fully realised.

We hope that you can join us! Please click here to view the agenda and and click here to register for the stakeholder event that the European Cancer Patient Coalition and EAPM are organizing.

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