Eurochip 1

Background
In spite of concern about cancer, a cancer monitoring system covering all countries of the European Union has not yet been implemented. A large-scale Health Monitoring Program (HMP) to establish health indicators for the European Union and for all diseases was yet implemented, giving a reasonable way to reach this important European goal. Cancer surveillance holds a privileged position, compared to other diseases, in terms of sources for collecting data, matured experience and availability of data. Population-based cancer registries covering entire countries and millions of other Europeans, whose initial purpose was to collect data on cancer occurrence, are now progressively providing much more detailed information on cancer, including diagnostic criteria and therapeutic procedures at individual level. More information on social-economic health variables, both at aggregated and individual levels, is now becoming available in European networks and institutions. For these reasons the project on cancer on these topics may propose useful methods and standards for developing the European Health Information System.
The present project, EUROpean Cancer Health Indicator Project- EUROCHIP-, was conceived as a contribute to the HMP and to produce a comprehensive list of health indicators pertaining to the control and treatment of cancer, indispensable for the development of the set of European health surveillance indicators.

Aims
EUROCHIP aimed to develop a comprehensive list of health indicators on cancer according to numerous European cancer experts. The list includes variables on risk factors’ prevalence, pre-clinic activity, cancer occurrence, clinical follow-up, cancer recurrences, patient survival, diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, effectiveness of cancer care, outcome and care prevalence. The list includes both variables that had already been proposed by other HMP projects and new variables that are specific for cancer and had not been suggested from other HMP projects.
The present project will assess the internal consistency of all these data according to criteria of easy collection, reliability, comparability, and country representatives. Moreover, the gained experience in the development of cancer health indicators will be centralized. The final aim will be to make available a comprehensive list of indicators that would describe cancer in terms of burden, prevention activity, standards of care, and cure rates.

Results
In synthesis EUROCHIP-1’s main work and results are:

1. Contact and co-ordinate people involved in different fields from different countries to develop the complex organization of the project. 130 persons from all the European countries have been directly involved in the project.
2. Organize several meetings in Europe: 4 Steering Committee meetings, 3 Panel of Experts meetings, 3 Methodological Group meetings, 8 National Groups of Specialists meetings and 5 Domain Groups of Specialists meetings.
3. Create forms to describe the indicators and their methodological aspects upon which all would agree
4. Develop a list of indicators and organize discussions on it.
5. Fill the forms for each indicator and provide an operational definition and proposals regarding methodological problems.
6. Present the list to the audiences of national and international cancer congresses in order to improve consensus on the indicators.
7. Publish articles on scientific journals- share methods and results.

June 2002

EUROCHIP-1 Final Report