CraNE - European Network of Comprehensive Cancer Centers

Background

Although continuous medical progress has been achieved in recent years and the treatment of many diseases has been further developed, cancer is still one of the most common causes of death in Europe. To enable effective and targeted treatment, the importance of transnational cooperation and the associated exchange of knowledge and skills is becoming increasingly significant.

As part of the Europe´s Beating Cancer Plan, the European Commission will establish an EU network linking the National Comprehensive Cancer Centres (CCCs) in every EU member state by 2025 (Flagship 5). The Joint Action CraNE is intended to support achieving this goal. The project has a duration of two years (10/2022 - 09/2024).

The initiative is coordinated by the National Institute of Public Health of the Republic of Slovenia (NIJZ) and includes 46 partners from 25 nations spread across health care providers, university hospitals, national health authorities, research institutes and universities.

Objectives

The overall goals of the CraNE project can be summarized as follows:

• Ensure a high level of quality within cancer centers
• Identify and improve organisational aspects to strengthen the link between centers to ensure patient navigation
• Assessing the sustainability and feasibility of the intended networking, taking into account the different health care systems

CraNE builds on the results of the previous European Joint Actions CANCON and iPAAC.

Our role

The responsibilities of our Research Group Digital Health are mainly anchored in Work Package 6 (WP6) "Organization of comprehensive, high-quality cancer care in Comprehensive Cancer Care Networks (CCCNs)". We are responsible for "Task 4 - Enhancing patient centeredness in CCCNs with patient pathways". To do this, we will first explore and define what patient-centered care means in a CCCN context. We will develop a patient pathway for the CCCN care of lung cancer patients and test it in the two pilot CCCNs in Luxembourg and Poland. The patient pathway will explicitly include use by the patients themselves, thus covering their perspective along the care journey in the CCCN. In addition, interoperability guidelines for the digitization of patient pathways in the CCCNs will be prepared.

Within work package WP6, the access to and availability of integrated, high quality cancer care in the CCCNs shall be expanded for all EU member states and a uniform high level of quality for cancer care will be promoted across all EU member states. Special attention is given to the expansion of the tumor-specific CCCN approach as well as a stronger focus on patient-centeredness and supporting tools for the establishment of CCCNs.

Work package 6 started its work with a kick-off meeting on the 5./6. December 2022 in Berlin.

Project Website CraNE: https://crane4health.eu/

Contact person: Dr. Peggy Richter