IKNL joins the consortium PIONEER for prostate cancer care

IKNL joins PIONEER, the European Network of Excellence for Big Data in Prostate Cancer. Within this consortium research will be strengthened with data from the Netherlands Cancer Registry (NCR). A Data Sharing Agreements was signed for this purpose. IKNL will share results of analyses and aggregated data with Pioneer partners, thus protecting the patients' privacy.

PIONEER aims to transform the field of prostate cancer care with particular focus on improving prostate-cancer related outcomes, health system efficiency and the quality of health and social care across Europe. PIONEER is part of the Innovative Medicine Initiative’s ‘Big Data for Better Outcomes’ (BD4BO) umbrella programme. The BD4BO mission is to improve health outcomes and healthcare systems in Europe by maximising the potential of Big Data

The NCR is maintained by the Netherlands Comprehensive Cancer Organisation (IKNL). The main goal of the IKNL is to reduce the impact of cancer, from the personal to the societal level. With the Netherlands Cancer Registry (NCR) as its core activity, IKNL enables health care professionals, researchers, policy makers and others to reflect on cancer and on palliative care. Together with care professionals, researchers, patients, and policy makers we translate data into valuable insights to improve oncological and palliative care.

The NCR can contribute results of analyses and aggregated data about diagnosis & treatment of up to 295,000 prostate cancer patients. IKNL will thus not share any data of individual patients.  Data scientist Peter Prinsen explains why the NCR decided to join PIONEER:

“We think joining PIONEER is a great opportunity for the Netherlands Cancer Registry to explore the possibilities that Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (OHDSI) offers to facilitate international research with our data and to bring out the value of health data through large-scale analytics.”

Involving Dutch data in this international research collaborative will allow PIONEER to answer the most important prostate cancer questions that have been prioritised by all stakeholders.

Read more at prostate-pioneer.eu