The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (DG JRC), together with the European Association of Research and Technology Organisations (EARTO), the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN)-the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardisation (CENELEC), and the European Commission Directorate-General Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROWTH) have launched an initiative to bring the scientific and standardisation communities closer together entitled 'Putting Science into Standards'. Such an event, where communication can occur between science and standards should be the ideal environment to address the challenge of common benchmarking for quality of care in breast cancer care services. This would facilitate the creation of a framework for an evidence-based screening of emerging science and technology, identification of research gaps and prioritisation needs, and agreement on areas which should be introduced early into the process of standardisation in order to enable innovation and facilitate improved breast cancer care services.
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Introduction
The European Commission's Initiative on Breast Cancer (ECIBC) aims at establishing a set of essential and evidence-based quality requirements for breast cancer care across Europe while developing the evidence underpinning the scheme, namely the New European guidelines for breast cancer screening and diagnosis. This initiative responds to the Council Conclusions on reducing the burden of cancer (Council Conclusions on reducing the burden of cancer - 2876th EMPLOYMENT, SOCIAL POLICY, HEALTH AND CONSUMER AFFAIRS Council Meeting - Luxembourg, 10 June 2008) and it aims to mitigate the risks connected to inadequate quality of prevention and care.
The JRC was assigned the coordination of ECIBC by DG SANTE with the support of working groups and is in the process of developing a voluntary European quality assurance scheme for breast cancer services (European QA scheme), based on evidence (via guidelines) and underpinned by the Regulation (EC) No 765/2008 on Accreditation, ensuring its consistent application in all countries; placing the woman / patient at the centre of the process and ensuring that appropriate communication and involvement in decisions occur when and as needed.
The European QA scheme will encompass all breast cancer stages: from the first invitation to screening, to diagnosis, surgery, treatment and post-treatment, including rehabilitation, palliative and psychosocial care.
The implementation of the requirements of such a scheme would be not only important for auditees (breast cancer services, e.g. hospitals, medical and screening centres, etc.) and auditors, but mainly for patients, policy makers and reimbursement systems, industrial and academic research and many other stakeholders. The development of breast cancer care standards could play a role in helping to implement the QA scheme.
Understanding how to do this is one of the main objectives of this Conference that is fully in line with the European Commission Work programme for European Standardisation for 2015, where the need to bring together the knowledge and experience of 'clinicians and representatives of regulatory authorities, research and development as well as accreditation and standardisation organisations' is encouraged in order to develop European standards.
Therefore, the proposal of developing a standard based on evidence (via the guidelines and the QA scheme to be developed in parallel on breast cancer under JRC scientific coordination) and with a good potential of uptake, as linked to a European-wide project, can be considered as a basis for an enlarged and inclusive discussion on the way forward and a possible blue-print for other areas, like health technology assessment, health(care) data and health-related tools (e.g. satisfaction questionnaires, apps, etc.), and a bridge towards other already active standardisation fields, like the one on e-health / health informatics.
Details
- Publication date
- 20 October 2015