Innovative Palliative Care for People with Cancer

‍

The European Commission hosted the Cancer Mission conference «Innovative Palliative Care for People with Cancer» in Brussel on October 7-8. With sessions focusing on ways to integrate palliative care throughout the cancer trajectory and how to overcome challenges to equal and equitable access, different solutions, including innovative approaches and new technologies, were presented.

The policy brief document «Innovative palliative care for people with cancer: sustainable solutions for the future» developed in collaboration with researchers and experts on palliative care, summarizing the evidence of palliative care and early integration, was the thread of the conference. It entails six recommendations to overcome current and future challenges to integrate palliative care into cancer care.

MyPath and European Palliative Cancer Research Centre (PRC) had a significant presence during the two-day conference, being presented at several sessions by different partners, and through an information stand.

At day one, MyPath was presented at the Early Career section. Here, Amaia Urrizola portrayed MyPath as a key “vehicle” to support palliative care in the future. It’s role in ensuring that palliative and patient-centred care are implemented routinely and across the whole cancer continuum, and in empowering patients and caregivers. MyPath addresses important challenges highlighted in the policy brief document mentioned above.

In the section “Future challenges in cancerpalliative care: Changing demographics” Nicoleta Mitrea, MyPath partner from Romania, reflected upon the keyrole of research collaborations across Europe, particularly for Eastern European countries that tend to be left “aside”. MyPath was presented as an innovative technology to address some of the constantly evolving challenges in cancer care that comes with changing demographics.

Finally, Professor Stein Kaasa, head of the MyPath project and deputy director in MATRIX, presented ways to overcome barriers to palliative and patient-centred care focusing especially on commercial and social determinants, in the section “How palliative care can be a natural part at all stages of cancer care”.  Being an implementation science project, MyPath was presented as a novel and sustainable solution to overcome these challenges to improved cancer care in the future.

‍