JANE-2

JANE-2 – Joint Action on Networks of Expertise on Cancer

JANE-2 aims to create seven EU networks of a new kind, entitled “Networks of Expertise” (NoEs), in the cancer field, covering the following crucial areas of current oncology: 

1. complex and poor-prognosis cancers;
2. palliative care;
3. survivorship;
4. personalized primary/secondary prevention;
5. omic technologies;
6. hi-tech medical resources;
7. adolescents and young adults with cancer.

These areas require greater harmonization in the EU, cooperation among health and research institutions, and a high degree of scientific and technological sharing, all of which would be greatly facilitated by functioning health networks.

The new NoEs will provide services to the whole European oncology community, including clinical practice guidelines and recommendations; quality of care criteria; health care and economic models; educational support; research promotion; support to patient advocates; support to political advocacy, all with a patient-centred approach. Those NoEs whose mandate covers substantially different scopes will foresee different domains, each coordinated by a domain leader.

The deployment of the NoEs will parallel the creation of the European Network of Comprehensive Cancer Centres (EUnetCCC), through another Joint Action.

In this framework, one of the aims of JANE-2 is to highlight the difficulties potentially preventing health networks in the EU from expressing their huge potential. The Consortium will continue the work started in the previous Joint Action JANE with the preparation of the “green paper”, Health networking on cancer in the European Union: a ‘green paper’ by the Joint Action on Networks of Expertise (JANE), including 13 questions to the European oncology community about the functioning of health networks in the EU.

NoEs will consist of a relatively limited number of partners with a European scope or coordination mandate at the national level, enabling them to behave as European networks of national/regional networks. Besides the competent authorities and affiliated entities participating in JANE-2, NoEs will also encompass partners to be selected in the future, referred to as “collaborating stakeholders”.

Networking is a great added value of European healthcare. NoEs will be an attempt to implement a completely new kind of networks. The challenge of the preparatory Joint Action JANE was to try to envisage them; JANE-2 will build them and let them fly. Its ultimate goal is to ensure that, by the end of JANE-2, NoEs will be largely independent but able to collaborate with each other, with other EU networks, and with the whole European oncology community (including scientific/professional societies, patient advocacy groups, etc.).