National Clinical Network

The Ministry of Health and Care has expressed a clear goal and wish that Norway should offer precision medicine to its citizens as part of an integrated line of treatment within the public health care system. The aim is to offer patients more precise and targeted diagnostics and treatment, while avoiding treatment without effect.

The Norwegian government in the Commission documents for 2019 and 2020 explicitly asked for initiatives that would accelerate the implementation of precision cancer medicine (PCM) both for research and standard patient care in the Norwegian healthcare system. Thus, in the last couple of years, targeted work has been performed to implement PCM at a national level in Norway, and a separate ecosystem has been funded and built up since 2019 to be able to offer cancer patients systematic use of molecular diagnostics and precision medicine. Matrix collaborates closely with and will build on the initiatives already established:

• InPreD – a national network for precision diagnostics. This infrastructure includes all six university hospitals in Norway that use advanced molecular diagnostics, which are subsequently reimbursed by the public healthcare system.

• IMPRESS-Norway – a national researcher-initiated clinical trial opened in April 2021, which contributes to targeted cancer treatment based on precision diagnostics. The study is open to patients who have an advanced cancer where there is no longer a well-established treatment alternative. Altogether, 17 hospitals in Norway with cancer departments participate in this trial.

• CONNECT – a public-private partnership driving the implementation of precision cancer medicine in Norway.

• INSIGHT-INCLUDE – a cluster which, among other things, looks at health economics and reimbursement models, ethics, statistics, legal aspects and management in relation to precision medicine in cancer treatment.

Matrix will also work closely with the two new proton centers in Oslo and Bergen when these are ready for use (tentatively from 2024).

Read more about the Norwegian precision cancer medicine initiatives in Taskén K. et al.:
‍A national precision cancer medicine implementation initiative for Norway. Nat Med. (2022) DOI: 10.1038/s41591-022-01777-4