European Commission Initiative on Breast Cancer: 2015 working groups' meetings

Abstract

The two main goals of the European Commission’s Initiative on Breast Cancer (ECIBC) are to develop the European guidelines for breast cancer screening and diagnosis (European Breast Guidelines) and to develop a voluntary European Quality Assurance scheme for Breast Cancer Services (the European QA scheme). The present report describes the kick-off and the second meeting of the two working groups established within the initiative to develop the guidelines and the European QA scheme, the Guidelines Development Group (GDG) and the Quality Assurance Scheme Development Group (QASDG), respectively. The two working groups were set up based on a Call for Expression of Interest organised by the Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety (DG SANTE). Thirty-four members for each working group were nominated in July 2015. The GDG includes individual citizens and patients, clinicians and methodology experts; the QASDG includes individual citizens and patients, clinicians and healthcare quality & safety experts. This is to ensure that a person-centred, while scientifically robust, process is followed for developing the European Breast Guidelines and the European QA scheme. The kick-off meetings were held at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) premises in Ispra (Italy), on 7-9 September, 2015 for the GDG and 9-11 September, 2015 for the QASDG. The second set of meetings were held in Baveno (Italy) on 9-11 December 2015, back-to-back with the ECIBC 2015 Plenary. The meetings were dedicated to the introduction to the ECIBC project, the definition of the groups' working modalities and the draft scope of the European Breast Guidelines and of the European QA scheme. The first recommendations from the European Breast Guidelines and the draft European QA scheme are expected to be available starting from 2017.