I was delighted to attend the Panel discussion on Accelerating Access to Cancer Care in Europe hosted by the Financial Times and Merck.
A key takeaway for me is that despite fantastic advances in medicine and drug research and development, differences in access, diagnosis, and cancer care still exist in Europe in 2023.
This message particularly resonates because it reminds me of our 2017 publication on Ethical Hurdles in the Prioritization of Oncology Care with my co-authors Folkert de Groot, Stefano Capri, Jean-Claude Castanier, David Cunningham, Bruno Flamion, Mathias Flume, Harald Herholz, Lars-Ake Levin, Oriol Sola-Morales , Christoph J. Rupprecht, Andrew Walker, and Olivier Wong.
According to the panelists this evening, equitable access to healthcare is seemingly worse than ever. To try to address this, the panelists highlighted the need for collaboration between the private and public sectors, access to better data, the use of biomarkers, tele-health, access to more funding and so many other things that could have been debated for hours.
Thank you to the FT, Merck, and the panelists for a fantastic discussion.
