In my presentation I presented the way the EORTC infrastructure is moving and by infrastructure I mean the work of the EORTC headquarters, whatever we build and organise to support the research of our investigators, of our network of investigators. What we are doing there, we see how the research environment is changing globally and how our structure needs to adapt to support all the questions that are coming in this new research environment because we know and we recognise that no matter how good our investigators are they need the support from our side to deliver what they want to.
What are the different components that make up this infrastructure?
It’s quite diverse. We use the term in a very broad sense so it is what people, indeed, recognise as infrastructure like software or communication platforms or stuff like that. But it’s also things like a network of contracts, a network of partners with specific terms of engagement, specific language that we use in our documents, our protocols and patient information sheets. So a whole ecosystem of things that are reusable that have to be in place at every type of research that we do. So we try to organise that in a way that anybody can readily use without spending time reinventing the wheel.
What are the main successes you’ve seen so far?
We’ve seen a structuring effect. So people are starting to work differently because when there is an infrastructure in the centre that infrastructure is addressing a need and not a specific specialty, for example, or a specific geographical area. So people have to reorganise themselves to come around their clinical needs. So that we have seen and we’re very happy about it.
We have seen many changes and successes on a technical front. So our quality has improved, our consistency in delivery has improved, the waste has decreased.
What are the main challenges to be faced?
Even if these changes were initiated to respond to a changing environment, that environment never stops changing. So we need to keep changing what we have built along the way and adapting to what we see coming, both in terms of science and in terms of regulatory and technical improvements.
The second challenge we face is to scale the initiative. We are currently focussing in Europe because that’s our natural operating environment but we built it in a way that it can scale globally as EORTC traditionally has been doing global research. So we have talked a lot with other partners, in the United States, for example, or Canada.
How does the future look for this initiative?
I try not to predict the future. So what we want to try to do with these initiatives, I would like the initiative to always fit the environment to be able to answer the relevant questions at any one time. What we try to do more, rather than predict the future, is to be very deliberate in the way we do our changes, the way we develop our infrastructure and our research so we can naturally follow the changes that will always be there and we will have to live with.
Is there anything you’d like to add?
I am very happy with this conference, I must say. I have been following a few EGAMs throughout the years, both as an EORTC staff member and as an investigator before, and it has been the most impressive meeting I remember. So I’m really happy about it.
