Funding the fight against cancer: a closer look at opportunities linked to the ECPDC
2nd July 2024 at 11:20 am
According to the latest EUROSTAT data, cancer was responsible for 21% of all deaths in the EU in 2021, making it the second leading cause of death. Despite this frightening number, personalised medicine and precision oncology have demonstrated significant potential to improve cancer survival rates. These approaches heavily rely on access to personal health data from patients, survivors, and their families and can only be successful if cancer patients and survivors have a good quality of life and the right tools to manage their journey, including participating in treatment decision-making and relevant research.
What is the European Cancer Patient Digital Centre (ECPDC)?
As a first step towards a patient-centric, data-driven approach to dealing with cancer and to increase the quality of life of patients and survivors, the EC assigned the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité Berlin to deliver a study providing an operational concept for a European Cancer Patient Digital Centre (ECPDC) to achieve the Cancer Mission’s fourth objective: “Quality of life for patients and their families”. The Implementation Plan of the Cancer Mission, released in 2021, outlined four core goals for the ECPDC:
During the study, which was conducted between December 2022 and August 2023, researchers developed an operational concept that assesses the potential of utilising existing and planned federated infrastructures at the EU and Member States’ level to contribute to an ECPDC. The Executive Summary of the ECPDC operational concept has recently been published by the European Commission and foresees the following three complementary concepts that outline how to build national ECPDC nodes. The concepts are consistent with regulatory requirements and coherent with the objectives of the Cancer Mission and Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan:
- Concept 1: ECPDC Information portal covers a novel approach to present cancer information in a standardised way for citizens and patients.
- Concept 2: Patient access to personal clinical data and the ability to collect and share personal health data covers personalised access to and sharing of personal cancer-related data in a uniform and interoperable way in all Member States.
- Concept 3: Co-decision on treatment and participation in research combine the results of the first two concepts towards a novel sustainable way to make the ECPDC portal the one-stop agency for all citizens and patients dealing with cancer, facilitating co‐decision in treatment and active participation in research.
Through the proposed ECPDC portal, patients and survivors would be able to access their own clinical data, deposit clinical and patient-reported health data in a standardised, ethical, and interoperable manner, and securely share their data with healthcare professionals and researchers.
Two more Cancer Mission call topics to support the ECPDC!
With the blueprint now in place, to the EC has launched two new call topics for project proposals to be submitted by 18 September 2024 that support the establishment of the ECPDC:
| Call Topic | Type of action | Budget (€ million) | Expected funded projects | Cluster(s) | Specific details |
| HORIZON-MISS-2024-CANCER-01-02: Support dialogue towards the development of national cancer data nodes | CSA | 3 | 1 | ‘Understanding’ and ‘Quality of Life’ | — |
| HORIZON-MISS-2024-CANCER-01-06: An information portal for the European Cancer Patient Digital Centre | IA | 12 | 1 | ‘Quality of Life’ | TRL 5-7 by the end of the project |
These are in addition to four other topics, all of which are part of the Cancer Mission Work Programme 2024, and for which there is still plenty of time to prepare a proposal:
- HORIZON-MISS-2024-CANCER-01-01: Use cases for the UNCAN.eu research data platform (RIA)
- HORIZON-MISS-2024-CANCER-01-03: Accessible and affordable tests to advance early detection of heritable cancers in European regions (IA)
- HORIZON-MISS-2024-CANCER-01-04: Support a pragmatic clinical trial programme by cancer charities (CSA)
- HORIZON-MISS-2024-CANCER-01-05: Improving the understanding and management of late-effects in adolescents and young adults (AYA) with cancer (RIA)
Set to begin the proposal writing journey? We are right there with you!
At accelopment, we understand that writing a Cancer Mission proposal is a complex endeavour and are ready to support you every step of the way. Thanks to our 100% success rate scoring 15/15 on our two submitted proposals, ThermoBreast and GLIOMATCH, we have key knowledge to address the Cancer Mission specifics and enable the success of clustering activities in your project. With our extensive track record of Horizon Europe Health projects, including COVend, GENEGUT, EDiHTA, MyPath and EU PAL-COPD, and our Horizon 2020 Health initiatives, such as AI-Mind, ENVISION, EURO SHOCK, EXIMIOUS and VANGUARD, we are ready to guide you in this exciting venture. Contact us, and let’s join forces to submit a successful proposal!
Dr. Eva Avilla Royo
Research & Innovation Project Manager