Euregio quality and innovative patient-centered cancer care

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The landscape: challenge and added value of cooperation: Cancer is a growing challenge for society. Its incidence is increasing with aging, and cancer is turning into a chronic disease. Besides classical treatment approaches improvement, many innovative treatments are emerging (immunotherapy, gene-targeted therapies). In addition to longer survival, better quality-of-life and costs are becoming 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. Focus on the patient and innovation allows to create organized networks, in which cooperation is set forth instead of competition. Our teams are dedicated to provide optimized care to patients in the Euregio, constantly seeking to improve services. Having innovative ideas, but lacking resources and/or methodology to translate them rapidly into practice, they suggest to exchange their winning solutions and to combine their assets. Our project proposes synergistic strategies to provide sustainable innovation and quality of care, thereby contributing to regional development and well-being of the population. It is based on collaboration between 5 academic institutions and 1 private company. The proof of concept of different tools in small and large non-academic hospitals will allow to outreach the program to rural and urban parts of the Euregio Meuse-Rhin. Project objectives and activities: OncoCare has an ambitious vision of improving the quality of cancer care throughout the Euregio. It proposes well-developed and realistic actions focusing on organizational and technological innovation with immediate results for the population. The project is structured in 3 actions (WP 3-4-5) whose challenges are describing in C.1.1 and their solutions in C.1.2. Axis 1 - Patient-centered medicine (WP3): The 1st action will set-up a teleconsulting network through which scientific & medical experts can provide personalized advice on partner and associated institutions patients. A 2nd action will develop a portable technology allowing research on patient assessment of the real added value of treatments (PROM). The 3rd action will develop a network of health professionals providing specialized cancer care at home. Axis 2 - Quality of care (WP4): We aim at developing quality management (QM) thanks to accreditation. We will harmonize cancer registries, facilitate data exchange for quality control, benchmarking, and clinical research and we will set-up efficient QM systems in our cancer centers. Furthermore, we will develop software for the global management of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), facilitating research and accreditation. Axis 3 - Access to innovative treatment (WP5) : We aim at fostering innovation opportunities and transferring them rapidly to the clinic. This action will develop cara pathways and guidelines and will share them with associated institutions. Furthermore, to facilitate access to innovative treatments, we will set-up a common research platform of clinical trials (CT), including a concerted strategy on rare cancer. Main results & outputs: Each action delineates expected results (C.1.2) and deliverables from WP 3-4-5. Great care will be devoted to durable establishment of tools (CT platform and care pathways, HSCT management tool, PROM tool, cancer registry, care pathway platform, QM systems) in order that partner institutions benefit from improved quality of their processes, develop research and comply with regulatory requirements via accreditations. Durability and added value of our collaboration will greatly increase by transferring various tools (home care network, teleconsulting, patient registry, care pathway and CT platforms) to associated institutions as well as by the exchanges with national/regional registries (e.g. LKR in NRW), thus synergistic trans-border network in the fight against cancer. Patients’ perception of healthcare quality highly depends on the quality of communication with healthcare providers. Facilitation of evidence-based personalized decision-making, patient-reported outcome measurements, access to innovative therapies and HAD will be perceived as great direct benefits. Within WP2 (Communication), our project emphasizes transparent communication on the project’s output to stakeholders (researchers, patient associations, general practitioners, oncology professionals…) and the general public. We also seek feed-back from patients, self-help groups, researchers, health professionals and deciders.

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