Message from the OECI President

High innovative Cancer Care through Coordinating Research and Education

We all know that the cancer problem is increasing both in Europe and worldwide. Parallel with an increasing cancer burden, due both to the increase of incidence but also to patients living longer with chronic cancer disease, the complexity in cancer care and research is escalating.

European cancer research is often criticised because it is fragmented.

To avoid the fragmentation the cancer research should be integrated into a research continuum from basic through preclinical and clinical research to structured implementation and evaluation of new diagnostic and treatment methods in routine care. The ideal integration of the research process can be achieved in the comprehensive cancer centre (CCC), since this structure is the only one where all research components exist and integrationwith cancer care is natural. Further, education has a position in the CCC and is integrated with care and research. 

According to the OECI vision a CCC should be a core and build a virtual organisation to reach all patients in a defined geographic area. The individual CCC can offer multidisciplinarity in cancer care and integration of the cancer research. However the critical mass for researchis often lacking. Therefore we need to share resources and increase collaboration to reach the critical mass by formalizing a network to harmonize the infrastructure of CCCs. The network will provide the scientific platform which can successively be enlarged through the OECI collaboration. This will ensure the quality of cancer care outside the individual CCC and also make more patients available for cancer research.

At present 52 centres are members of OECI. Probably Europe needs around 100 CCCs to serve the population and to form a strong research structure. An important mission for OECI is to establish a relationship with basic and preclinical research centres in Europe. Integrating basic and clinical research centres with a network of CCCs will facilitate the development of personalised medicine as well as the development of new diagnostic and treatment methods.

For more details on OECI visit www.oeci.eu

Prof. Wim H. van Harten MD, PhD, Community Medicine