All.Can Global Summit
On 27 and 28 May, All.Can held its virtual Global Summit entitled ‘Improving Efficiency in Cancer Care Through Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration.
The policy-oriented, external meeting of 27 May was attended by over 200 participants from 37 countries and saw the launch of the new All.Can data report, ‘Harnessing data for better cancer care’ (read more below). The panel sessions on efficiency and data featured experts from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), as well as patient representatives, healthcare professionals, and industry players. The recording of the meeting as well as speaker presentations are available here.
The meetings on 28 May took place earlier and later in the day to accommodate the different time zones of the All.Can membership. Members and National Initiatives had the opportunity to interact and get to know each other, participate in polls to identify common priority areas, and attend the breakout sessions on supportive care and harnessing data for better cancer care. Following the meetings, participants also attended virtual networking sessions on Wonder platform.
All.Can publishes landmark data report
The new All.Can policy report ‘Harnessing data for better cancer care’ has been presented during the All.Can Global Summit meeting on 27 May.
The report makes recommendations to overcome the main barriers to fully harnessing the immense potential of data to transform cancer care, including data siloes, a lack of interoperability, unclear actionability of existing data, complex data governance, and limited ability to re-use data for other purposes. With this report, All.Can calls on policymakers to consider data both as an investment and an innovation, and highlights that having the correct data systems in place that enable the analysis and extraction of meaningful insights to guide decision-making, is as important to the future of cancer care as new medicines and other advances.
You can download the full report and a summary here.
Please click here and enter the password data_comms to access a complete toolkit with communications materials to help you disseminate the report and it’s messages widely.
European Parliament publishes briefing on Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan
A new European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS) briefing on Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan (EBCP) provides an overview of thematic headings, flagship initiatives and examples of actions. The document also summarises initial reactions to the Plan from major stakeholders.
The European Parliament’s Special Committee on Beating Cancer (BECA) is currently working on an own-initiative report to contribute to the EBCP. The first draft of this report will be presented during the BECA meeting of 15 July.
ECO launches the TimeToAct campaign
On 11 May, the European Cancer Organisation (ECO) launched its multilingual TimeToAct campaign calling for urgent policy action to tackle concerns about cancer care in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The campaign is based on ECO’s research findings that:
- An estimated one million Cancer cases could be undiagnosed in Europe
- An estimated 100 million Cancer screening tests were not performed in Europe during the pandemic, leading to later stage diagnoses and decreased overall survival
- Up to 1 in 2 people with potential cancer symptoms were not urgently referred for diagnosis
- 1 in every 5 cancer patients in Europe is currently still not receiving the surgical or chemotherapy treatment they need.
ECO’s findings have also been presented during the BECA discussion on COVID-19 and cancer on 10 May. Previously, BECA had conducted a public consultation on the impact of COVID-19 on cancer care, which concluded that the pandemic has led to significant delays in cancer detection and treatment, and created significant backlogs that further pressurised the already strained healthcare systems. A synopsis report of this consultation is available here.
Visit the TimeToAct campaign webpage for further info and assets, including a toolkit available in over 30 languages and a COVID-19 & Cancer information hub, tailored for patients, healthcare professionals and decision-makers.