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Through building enhanced clinical registry
capabilities, PICORET will prospectively
collect detailed clinical and biological
information that can be used for quality
improvement of diagnostics and treatment
pathways for patients treated by a standard
treatment outside of clinical trials. PICORET
will monitor the survival of all children and
adolescents with cancer in Europe, and
will evaluate and compare the quality and
effectiveness of treatments. High resolution
studies will be run.
Initially, PICORET will focus on renal tumours,
neuroblastoma and medulloblastoma as its
first exemplars. It will develop standardised
clinical guidelines as well as a standardisation
and quality programme in standard care, with
a special focus on infant dosing. Twinning
between institutions in countries with higher
and lower survival rates will be introduced.
Data privacy will be carefully monitored, and
the project’s impact will be assessed.
Platform for quality assurance in
radiotherapy – The QUARTET project
Quality assurance and quality control are
mandatory when patients receive radiation
therapy. This is to make sure that each
patient gets the best treatment in terms of
maximising effectiveness and minimising
long-term side effects. However, they are not
systematically performed within clinical trials
and various programmes are implemented
only in a limited number of EU countries.
TheQUARTETproject(‘QUAlityandexcellence
in RadioTherapy and imaging for children
and adolescents with cancer across Europe
in clinical Trials’) aims to build a radiation
therapy quality assurance programme across
all paediatric malignancies. It will be run in
partnership with the European Organisation
for Research on Treatment of Cancer (EORTC)
and Aquilab for patients participating in
clinical trials using radiation therapy and
run by ECTGs. Eventually, the platform will
expand its activity to patients treated outside
of clinical trials.
THE SIOPE STRATEGIC PLAN
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Credit Attilio Rossetti
photographer, Italy
Credit Institut Gustave Roussy, France Credit Sociedade de Hemato-Oncologia
Pediátrica (SHOP), Portugal