New cross-border research programme aims to tackle 'future cancer pandemic'
A NEW cross-border research programme between the University of Limerick and Queen’s University Belfast is aiming to tackle a 'future cancer epidemic'.
Researchers at the institutions are warning that the pandemic has had a 'potentially disastrous impact' on cancer care and patients and that action is needed now to prevent a crisis in the future.
This ambitious new research programme harnessing the collective data and digital health skills aims to generate the data intelligence required both to understand the potential scale of the cancer problem and to help devise solutions.
This programme of research has received significant funding of €4 million under the Shared Ireland North South Research Fund to establish an All Island eHealth Hub for Cancer.
Professor Aedin Culhane, Professor of Cancer Genomics at University of Limerick said: "Cancer is the leading cause of death on the island of Ireland. The pandemic has halted or reversed advances in cancer outcomes.
"A lack of infrastructure to share digital health data is severely limiting cross-border cancer research, hindering our understanding of the full impact of COVID-19 on cancer outcomes on the island. Government reports say it is negatively impacting their ability to develop evidence-based policy
"The eHealth-Hub will train researchers in real-world health data science and best practice in software development, developing infrastructure and software tools that can map all-island health data to a standard format" explained Professor Culhane.
Professor Ruth Clifford, Consultant Haematologist at University Hospital Limerick, said: "This programme will unite cancer clinicians and researchers across the island in their combined efforts to understand the true demographic of cancer and all of its subtypes for the Irish population.
“Within Irish healthcare we do not have detailed data in the appropriate formats. Securing these data will allow us to engage with international research consortia and with industry to improve access to both cutting-edge diagnostics and therapeutics.
"During the COVID pandemic my colleagues, both oncologists and haematologists, across the cancer centres of Ireland saw first-hand the detrimental effects of limited services and delayed diagnoses. The e-health hub will address these challenges with data-driven healthcare."