Innovation & collaboration: How we can all work together to stem the tide against cancer

I had the privilege last December of participating with Ben Lucas, VP Managing Director MSD UK & Ireland, in FT Live’s MSD-supported event on “Accelerating access to cancer care in Europe”. This was a great opportunity to highlight the growing burden of cancer to European policymakers and healthcare players, as well as the actions that we can take to stem the tide of this devastating disease.

If I have one message from the event, it would be this: innovation and collaboration, notably between the public and private sectors, are the key to taking decisive action for longer and healthier lives for millions of people.

The cancer burden is particularly relevant in Europe. With an ageing population, there has been a 50% increase in the incidence of cancer over the past three decades. Cancer is now the second leading cause of death in the European Union.

On a positive note, during the past decade we’ve seen great improvements in cancer care, notably enabled by early detection, screening and innovation in treatments. Average survival rates across all cancers have now come close to 60%, an increase of more than 10% in the past decade. However, progress is distributed unevenly, as younger people have seen greater improvements and there are differences by tumour type. Breast and prostate cancer for example tend to have higher survival rates.

All the evidence points us one way: we need to do more to prevent cancer, detect it early and treat it early!

European policymakers have been stepping up action in recent years with Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan, a major commitment by the European Commission, looking at the entire cancer spectrum from prevention to early detection, treatment and survivorship. Actions against cancer are being further materialised at the country level in National Cancer Control Plans (NCCPs).

Progress can be achieved when the right goals are set, funded appropriately and consistently monitored.

Some of the common challenges we face are inefficiencies, such as significant delays in the time to diagnosis and time to treatment even after the diagnosis is made. We believe public and private partnerships can remedy some of these inefficiencies; firstly, by identifying them by jointly mapping patient pathways and then by creating joint action plans by re-designing services and optimising resources.

Another example of public-private partnership is the Cancer Dashboard initiative, which I had the opportunity to present at the FT Live event. As a rule of thumb, only what gets measured gets done. Cancer Dashboards can support the development of national cancer plans by providing and tracking a structured set of key performance indicators (KPIs) on cancer care.

These dashboards can serve as a starting point for engaging policymakers around a common set of KPIs, ranging from availability of screening and vaccination programmes to accessibility of innovative treatment. They can further enable the needed conversations with all key stakeholders in a factful and transparent way, with the shared goals of boosting health literacy, optimising funding allocation and dismantling administrative hurdles to prevention, early detection, and swift treatment.

With stark inequalities in cancer care between and within different European countries, fact-based dialogues are what we need. Such dashboards can serve as a great starting point and enable constructive dialogue.

Cancer will be a steadily growing challenge in the years and decades to come. Through continuous innovation and collaboration with all key stakeholders, we can take great strides towards better preventing and treating cancer, enabling longer and healthier lives for millions of people.