PROJECT OVERVIEW

Cancer is a growing challenge for society. Its incidence increases with the aging of the population and cancer is turning into a chronic disease. Beside progress in classical treatment approaches, many innovative therapies are emerging. Beyond survival, better quality-of-life and costs become prominent issues.

To face these challenges, academic hospitals and universities are developing comprehensive cancer centers, integrating multidisciplinary care managed in a quality-oriented manner, clinical / translational research and teaching. A focus on patient and innovation allows creating organized networks, in which cooperation is set forth instead of competition.

Thus, OncoCare Project gathers teams from 6 academic institutions dedicated to providing optimized care to patients in the Euregio, constantly seeking to improve services via 3 actions (T1-T2-T3). 

T1. Patient-centered Medicine

The main aim of this first axis is to improve the comfort of the patient, maintain professional oncological care and increase the efficiency and effectiveness of research in the Euregio, while guaranteeing the highest level of medical quality and helping to empower our patients in a very significant way, thanks to 3 closely related sub-actions:

  • T1.1 – Teleconsulting: Set-up an innovative and profession way to discuss the diagnosis and treatment of oncology patients to allow scientific and medical experts to provide personalized advice on partners’ and associated institutions’ patients.

  • T1.2 – PROM: Develop an application for a systematic analysis of the patient’s perspective on the oncological care and treatment and compare it with clinical opinion to support research on patients’ assessment of the real added value of their treatments. 

  • T1.3 – Home Hospitalization: Transfer of the essential elements of specialized oncological care, generally carried out in the hospital, to the home of the patient

T2. Quality of care

The healthcare sector is evolving towards an integrated organization of quality management (QM) and assessment. Cornerstones of a QM program are registries, IT management tools and certifications. Two sub-actions are involved for this second axis:

  • T2.1 – QM of cancer center: Improvement of M QM systems, harmonization and exchange of data between cancer registries of our Euregio cancer centers to facilitate data exchange for quality control, benchmarking and clinical research

  • T2.2 – QM Hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT): (1) JACIE (Joint Committee for Accreditation of the ISCT and the EBMT) accreditation achievement by ECCA; (2) Development of a software for the global management of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation

T3. Access to Innovative Medicine

This third axis aims at providing up-to-date, optimized care to cancer patients as well as at increasing the visibility of clinical trial opportunities, thanks to the development of two tools:

  • T3.1 – Care pathways: (1) Share a common library of guidelines (2) Set-up a cross-border platform to facilitate the generation of a cross-regional clinical pathways

  • T3.2 – Clinical trial platform: Develop a common IT tool and a platform for patients and doctors to search for innovative clinical trials.