Press Release: ONCOSCREEN on Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month

• This Colorectal Cancer (CRC) Awareness Month, the ONCOSCREEN project was on a mission to raise awareness of the importance of early detection of the disease.
• Second Annual CRC Awareness Month Webinar has been co-hosted by ONCOSCREEN and DIOPTRA.
• ONCOSCREEN is publishing a series of articles on the barriers to innovative financing methods for screening programs and ways to overcome these barriers.

With colorectal cancer (CRC) quickly becoming one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths in Europe, and an increasing prevalence of the disease amongst young people, the EU-funded project ONCOSCREEN aims to raise awareness about CRC and the importance of early screening programs. March is CRC Awareness Month and marks the beginning of an intensive campaign by ONCOSCREEN raise awareness amongst European citizens about the steps they can take do decrease their risk of developing CRC.

Recently, ONCOSCREEN co-hosted its second annual joint webinar with fellow leading Horizon Europe Mission Cancer project, DIOPTRA. As members of the European Union Cancer Mission’s “Prevention and Early Detection (Screening)” Cluster, this event aimed to share insights into the innovative work being done by both projects and foster a culture of cross-pollination.

The webinar took place on the 12^th of March from 10:00 CET and saw 1.5 hours of discussions regarding some of the technological innovations that are being developed within each project. This included insights into ONCORISTE and ONCOCLIDE, two tools being developed by ONCOSCREEN. ONCORISTE is a “risk stratification engine” and ONCOSCLIDE is a “clinical decision-making support system”, which integrates the data supplied by ONCORISTE to consolidate medical information into actionable suggestions for clinicians.

“We are effectively looking into possibilities to create more affordable and accessible methods to prevent the development of colorectal cancer”, says Anaxagoras Fotopoulos, ONCOSCREEN project coordinator. “The webinar highlighted how our collaboration on ground-breaking technologies will create the condition to influence policy actions and future research on the topic.”

In tandem with the technological innovations being developed within ONCOSCREEN come more social and policy-based efforts. Part of this has been to identify the barriers patients face when navigating financial schemes for CRC screening. Part of the project’s CRC Awareness Month efforts aim to platform these critical challenges and how they can be overcome.

The Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month Collection is a series of articles that discuss several of these barriers in detail, including regulatory, financial, social, and ethical barriers. In the second half of the series, different strategies to overcome these for barriers will be outlined. To read this series, click here: https://oncoscreen.health/news/.

For technical enquiries:

Anaxagoras Fotopoulos, Project Coordination Team, EXUS AI Labs

E-mail |ONCOSCREEN_coordination@exus.co.uk

For media enquiries:

Ivanna Katz, EU Project Manager, Carr Communications

E-mail | ikatz@carrcommunications.ie

X/Twitter | @oncoscreen

LinkedIn | ONCOSCREEN

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HADEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.”