Dealing with cancer, involving personalised medicine in health-care systems - World Cancer Day

Welcome, health colleagues, to the European Alliance for Personalised Medicine (EAPM) update – today (4 February) marks the annually held World Cancer Day, and next week, EAPM is circulating a report around the barriers and enablers to facilitate bringing personalised medicine into health-care systems at the global level, writes EAPM Executive Director Dr. Denis Horgan.

World Cancer Day

The pandemic has had a devastating impact on people with cancer - according to the WHO’s latest survey, cancer screening and treatment was disrupted in the last quarter of 2021 by up to 50% in all countries reporting

With today being World Cancer Day, a call has been issued to use the possible stability of the days ahead to address other urgent health priorities such as cancer care, and a geographic analysis of various cancer deaths in Spain and Portugal between 2003 and 2012 — a collaboration between the two states’ national health institutes — reveals lethal hot spots.

The European Commission has pledged to make the battle against cancer in Europe a key priority of the legislative term. 

EAPM is also playing its part, and all politicians and stakeholders working in health care know how high citizens place health and healthcare on the day-to-day agenda, but we need concrete actions right now to go with the well-meaning talk and pledges for the future.

Commission launches four Cancer Plan actions 

The European Commission has announced that it is implementing four new actions that were first laid out in its Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan policy document.

The first of these is the Cancer Inequalities Registry — a flagship initiative that was originally scheduled for 2021. The registry, now operational, gathers data on inequalities in cancer prevention and care across different measures: gender, geography, as well as social and economic factors. Policymakers will use the data to guide action to reduce these disparities. 

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It is governed by the Directorate-General For Health and Food Safety, the Directorate-General for the Joint Research Centre, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The Commission also launched a call for evidence to update Council recommendations from 2003 on cancer screening. In the Cancer Plan, the Commission said it would consider extending screening targets beyond breast, colorectal and cervical cancer to include prostate, lung and gastric cancer.

Meanwhile, a joint action on human papillomavirus vaccination would promote higher uptake of shots to protect against cervical cancer. The Cancer Plan aims to eliminate cervical cancer by vaccinating almost all girls against HPV by 2030.

As a final action, the Commission announced the rollout of an EU Network of Youth Cancer Survivors in order to “strengthen long-term follow-up in cancer care plans at national and regional level.”

Health and Food Safety Commissioner Stella Kyriakides is hosting an event today on women’s cancer, highlighting the EU’s Cancer Plan. 

Bringing personalised medicine into health-care systems: Global Index

Personalised medicine can deliver benefits for the citizens through public health initiatives that promote disease prevention, prediction of risk, and promotion of healthy lifestyles, with innovative medical interventions tailored to the specific needs of individual patients, providing better treatment, preventing adverse reactions and fostering a more efficient and cost-effective healthcare system. 

But health care systems are not always ready to respond to the opportunities. The disruptive nature of personalised care challenges the traditional patterns of thinking in this domain. Practices, presumptions, and even prejudices that date from before the millennium tend to resist a 21st century approach to health care. 

A revised policy framework is needed to empower the scientific enterprise that can realise this potential. In the wake of the perfect storm that COVID 19 posed for healthcare policy and the intensified global concern over the adequacy of health-care systems, the chance exists to re-align priorities to evaluate the needs of patients, healthcare professionals and health systems to protect health better and to facilitate improved and safer therapies.

PM has implications not just for improving survival but also for the full range of health policy and the broadest social dimension, with its implications of value to patients, HCS, society and citizens. The discussion needs also to take account of this scope, and to envisage collaboration between all, including those who regulate and those who pay for healthcare and social provision.

The study which will be published next week will explore what factors that are the most crucial to ensure that health systems are resilient enough to not only handle shocks like a global pandemic but also respond to those underlying forces that are shaping healthcare needs, and particularly for cancer patients, where PM has already begun to transform care prospects. 

A policy framework to bring personalised medicine into healthcare systems is still not in place everywhere, leaving significant gaps in the approach to issues such as governance, finance, reimbursement, infrastructure, interdisciplinary co-operation.

A European vision for digital health ensuring citizens' trust

Given that the accelerated deployment of digital health has made it a strategic pillar of the European Health Union, it is now more necessary than ever to propose an ethical and civic European vision to guarantee citizen trust and uptake. 

The role of digital technology in managing the COVID-19 crisis demonstrated the importance of an ethical and coordinated approach to managing health data, while the deployment of European digital health services is already a reality with the ongoing roll-out of MyHealth@EU. These tools facilitate continuity of care for European citizens when they travel to another country in the EU. 

Various European initiatives preparing the use of health data at European level for the purposes of research, innovation and public policy have also been launched. 

The negotiation of the draft EU regulation on the future European Health Data Space, scheduled during the French Presidency, must respond to these objectives. 

These next steps of the roll-out require a framework of trust expected by European citizens. The conference will also allow cross-disciplinary actors to exchange points of view on the following questions: 

How can citizens be more involved in the management of their health data? What are the new forms of data governance that have been made possible by digitization? How can all citizens be included, even those with poor access to digital technology, when health systems are being modernised and eHealth services are being deployed? How are sustainability concerns being taken into account with regard to digital health services? 

The European ethical approach to the digitization of health played a driving role in the crisis, for example in enforcing the cohesive and independent European model of the EU Digital COVID Certificate. Through this initiative, the EU demonstrated its capacity to offer technological solutions based on an ethical approach to data management and created an international standard in just a few weeks. This model of European digital development, in line with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), is a truly strategic decision and reference point that the EU can promote internationally to bolster its sovereignty and respect for its values.

Nor forgetting non-communicable diseases

The European Commission’s health department, DG SANTE, held a stakeholder meeting on Thursday (3 February) to gather feedback on its priorities in tackling non-communicable diseases (NCDs). It’s part of developing its policy road map , which aims to cover policies and practices addressing health determinants, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, chronic respiratory diseases, and mental health and neurological disorders, and a minimum of €1.06 billion is earmarked for health promotion and disease prevention, including cancer, said Donata Meroni, head of DG SANTE’s  health promotion.

And that is everything from EAPM for this week – stay safe and well, enjoy your weekend.

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