ECPC is honored to be the only patient organization to have been invited at the Expert Conference on Oncology ‘’Modern Cancer Control: Saving Lives through Smart Solutions’’ organized by the Czech Presidency of the Council of the European Union on 13-14 July in Brno, Czech Republic. On this occasion, ECPC emphasized the need for cancer patients’ organizations being involved in the process of establishing Comprehensive Cancer Infrastructures (CCIs) at the EU level and the importance of patients being at the center of the digital momentum.

As a way to support joint efforts to tackle the cancer burden, in addition to reinforcing the EU ambitions and objectives in this sense, namely Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan and the EU Mission on Cancer, the event in Brno reunited oncology experts from different Member States, senior representatives of the European Commission and the World Health Organization, and

representatives of the cancer patient community. The aim of this high-level event was for the invited experts to share their knowledge and experience at the national level on key areas that need further policy developments.

The Conference focused on the following interconnected topics:

1. Comprehensive Cancer Infrastructures;
2. Future of cancer registries and European Health Data Space;
3. Improving early detection of cancer and screening schemes in EU.

ECPC President, Francesco de Lorenzo and ECPC Senior EU Affairs Manager, Dr. Adela Maghear represented the organization as official delegates and brought their input to the expert conference. The outcome of this high-level meeting was a Call to Action that came to reaffirm the strong commitment of all official delegates on the EU fight against cancer.

ECPC has brought its’ valuable contribution to the final content of this Call to Action, in order to strengthen the need for a patient centric approach and the crucial role of patient organizations to accelerate progress and overcome obstacles in meeting the EU flagships initiatives.

ECPC’s contribution to the final document included the following key aspects:

• The need for CCIs to consider defining an outreach area for each CCI, as well as the range and scope of services in the areas of prevention, cancer screening and diagnosis treatment, supportive and palliative care, survivorship, research, education and patient involvement, monitoring and evaluation of the quality of care;
• The urgency to develop CCIs in each Member State and of at least one CCI per 5 million inhabitants in larger countries and ensure access to multidisciplinary oncology services to all cancer patients;
• The integration of the recommendations and goals of the Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan and EU Cancer Mission in the concept of the CCIs Network to ensure that innovations reach all patients across Europe;
• The European Commission should support Member States to drive forward the actions required to meet the ambitions set by EU Beating Cancer Plan, monitor closely the uptake at the national level and the progress towards the achievement of the agreed goals;
• The need for sustainable, resilient and value-based health systems that are driven by high- quality, comparable data. Such health systems consider the outcomes that matter to people and patients and are able to collect and analyse them in real time;
• The European Union should support Member States to invest more in health literacy and digital health literacy of patients and heath care professionals.