Marius Geantă
Cancer patients in CEE face major challenges that need to be surpassed in order to ensure accurately designed prevention strategies, integrative care, support and rehabilitation. In this context, the Centre for Innovation in Medicine launched in 2019, in the context of Romanian Presidency of EU Council, the paper “A new vision for cancer in the European Union, based on data, technologies and human touch”. Following the European Cancer Plan approach, this report aims to reflect on the patient as the new centre of a broader vision and the need of personalized and individualised approaches for prevention, early detection, further diagnosis, treatment and follow-up.
The primary scope of the EU Beating Cancer Plan is to enhance the prevention, detection, treatment and the management of the disease whilst inequalities between and within each MS are reduced. Health systems need new models of governance, funding and evaluation of results in the fight against cancer. In order to achieve this goal, it’s essential to recognize the role of new players – non-governmental non-profit organisations; to promote the transfer of knowledge through twinning projects; to use cancer data through direct citizen involvement; to rethink doctors’ education and to promote single European protocols for cancer management; to promote pay for value approach and strict control rules for EU funding.
Innovation must become a factor that unites Eastern and Western Europe, it must not be a factor that divides even more. No one should be left behind, let alone in the field of cancer.