Cancer Mission Conference: Innovative Palliative Care for People with Cancer

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

The brief policy document «Innovative palliative care for people with cancer: sustainable solutions for the future» prepared in collaboration with researchers and experts on palliative care, summarizes evidence for the importance of palliative care and early integration, and this was the threadthroughout the conference. The policy document presents six recommendations for how 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 session. Here, Amaia Urrizola from Oslo University Hospital described MyPath as a key tool to support palliative care in the future. The project's role is to ensure that palliative and patient-centred care are implemented routinely and across the entire cancer continuum. Furthermore, the new tools will empower patients and their caregivers. MyPath addresses important challenges highlighted in the policy document described above.

In the section “Future challenges in cancer palliative 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, according to her, 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.

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