Despite decades of devoted research, cancer remains a tremendous health threat and societal burden. Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan aims to improve the lives of more than 3 million people by 2030 by improving prevention, early detection, diagnostics, therapeutics, and quality of life. The biggest single hurdle here is the highly inadequate way cancer data, both from research and healthcare, are still being dealt with. While other areas of society (e.g., e-finance, e-commerce, logistics, travel, meteorology, etc.) have fully exploited advances in data and information technology to serve organisations as well as individual consumers, so far this has failed in the health domain. Consequently, cancer data are hard to find, access, make Interoperable, and reuse. Evidently, this is not caused by a lack of suitable technology, but rather by organisational, social, and cultural causes. Inherently, solving the problem requires a cultural shift from the current craftsmanship approach to cancer research and data, to a drastic collaboration model at an industrial scale. CANDLE therefore aims to scale up and improve existing (inter)national health data infrastructures, align maximally with national EHDS implementations in member states, including HDAB’s, DAAMS’s and SPE’s. CANDLE will also identify and resolve potential barriers (https://www.health-ri.nl/en/participation/obstacles-removal-trajectory ) that jeopardize the effective implementation of
UNCAN.eu and ECPDC digital platforms. CANDLE aims to equip data users and NCDN developers with a ‘ready-to-use’ CANDLE Resource Kit in a process-oriented (research journey, patient journey, data life cycle) way. In summary, CANDLE will provide an avenue towards a successful and highly desired data transformation in European cancer research and serve as a catalyzer for the UNCAN.eu and ECPDC platforms by advancing the development of NCDNs to reach the goal of the Cancer Mission and Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan, i.e., reducing the burden of cancer.
Project funding:
EU Research and Innovation Funding Programme “Horizon Europe”
Period of project implementation: 2025-06-01 - 2028-05-31
Project coordinator: STICHTING HEALTH-RI
Project partners: EMPIRICA GESELLSCHAFT FUR KOMMUNIKATIONS UND TECHNOLOGIEFORSCHUNG MBH, Cancer Research and Innovation Hub Malta CRIHM Foundation, LUXEMBOURG INSTITUTE OF HEALTH, SCIENSANO, ETHNIKO KENTRO EREVNAS KAI TECHNOLOGIKIS ANAPTYXIS (CERTH), OSLO UNIVERSITETSSYKEHUS HF, UNIVERSITY OF LIMERICK, ASSOCIACAO ISCTE CONHECIMENTO E INOVACAO - CENTRO DE VALORIZACAO E TRANSFERENCIA DE TECNOLOGIAS, Utrecht university, ETHNIKO KENTRO TEKMIRIOSIS KAI ILEKTRONIKOU PERIECHOMENOU, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), Centre National De La Recherche Scientifique CNRS, CHARITE - UNIVERSITAETSMEDIZIN BERLIN, STICHTING LYGATURE, HUS-YHTYMA, ECRIN EUROPEAN CLINICAL RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURE NETWORK, STICHTING INTEGRAAL KANKERCENTRUM NEDERLAND, EUROPEAN CANCER ORGANISATION, Biobanks And Biomolecular Resources Research Infrastructure Consortium (BBMRI-ERIC), EATRIS ERIC, Kaunas University of Technology, STEINBEIS INNOVATION GGMBH, EURO-BIOIMAGING ERIC, INSTITUTO ARAGONES DE CIENCIAS DE LA SALUD, FUNDACION PARA LA INVESTIGACION DEL HOSPITAL UNIVERSITARIO LA FE DE LA COMUNIDAD VALENCIANA
