20. 05. 2019 – 20. 05. 2019 | Budapest


The WP5 Conference Early Diagnosis of Cancer - 5 Things You Need to Know will take place on 20 May 2019 and will be hosted by the Hungarian National Institute of Oncology in Budapest. Registrations for the conference have been extended until 10 May!


Aims and scope of the conference

Early diagnosis of cancer – that is the recognition mainly of symptomatic cancer in patients – is in the focus of this conference. The objective of early diagnosis is to identify the disease at the earliest possible opportunity and lead to diagnosis and treatment without delays. When done promptly, cancer may be detected at a potentially curable stage, improving survival and quality of life.

Early diagnosis practices can sometimes induce harms in the patient population, such as over-diagnosis or over-treatment. Possible harms are relevant for patient information. There are also several barriers linked to suboptimal impact and social inequalities in health. These include e.g. health illiteracy, lack of awareness or resources, poor organization of the patient pathways, or lack of evidence. The scope of the conference is to deal with the above key issues in order to understand better the current state and challenges, and to improve European agenda on early diagnosis of cancer.

Developments in early diagnosis of head and neck, skin, prostate and breast cancers will be in a specific focus. The conference will deal also with other primary sites depending upon the interests among the participants. Please note that developments in other fields of early detection of cancer, such as in cancer screening programmes, will not be a topic for this conference and will be dealt later in another dedicated task of the Work Package.

Conference mode

This is a task specific conference with co-creation. Co-creation means facilitating discussion and dialogue, increasing engagement across participants in small groups and fostering problem solving to identify best policies. We will be working towards drafting a plan of early detection and its management, including over-diagnosis.

Target groups

The primary target group of the iPAAC Joint Action are policymakers at the EU level and decision makers at the national, regional and local levels. The target group of this conference will consist also of experts in professional and scientific organisations, who will have direct benefit from the JA by sharing expertise and experience regarding cancer control issues. Cancer patients and patient organisations, who stand to benefit from the focus on innovation and implementation of cancer control actions and strategies, are also in the potential target group.

Specific conference outcomes

WP5 has 3 tasks addressing early detection, cancer screening, and health promotion. Each task will produce comprehensive reports, reflecting perspectives from all partners of the WP5 rather than reports and reviews by working groups. Desired outcomes from this 1st iPAAC conference are:

  1. early detection and management are getting more emphasis in cancer control
  2. contribution of a draft plan which advances early detection on European, regional and local level
  3. barriers to early detection are more widely known and better understood on policy level