On 20 and 21 October 2015 in Ispra, Italy, EA will participate in the 2015 Conference of the initiative entitled Putting Science into Standards (PSIS) to be dedicated to quality assurance for breast cancer services.
The Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission (EC), together with the European Association of Research and Technology Organisations (EARTO), the European Standards Organisations CEN and CENELEC, and the EC Directorate-General Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROWTH) have recently launched an initiative called Putting Science into Standards (PSIS) to bring the scientific and standardization communities closer together. The 2015 event to be held at JRC-Ispra will focus on the EC Initiative on Breast Cancer (ECIBC) which aims at establishing a set of essential and evidence-based quality requirements for breast cancer care across Europe.
The JRC is currently developing a European quality assurance scheme for breast cancer services underpinned by Regulation (EC) 765/2008 on accreditation, and to which EA is actively contributing through a working group led by RvA, the Dutch national accreditation body (NAB), since 2014. To get
further detail on this ongoing EA-EC cooperation project, please read our news at:
http://www.european-accreditation.org/information/ea-iscooperating-with-the-european-commission-to-ensure-optimal-quality-of-breastcancer-services
Understanding the development processes of healthcare accreditation, notably, and considering whether standardisation can play a role in supporting this European quality assurance scheme, are among the main objectives of the conference.
Andreas Steinhorst, the EA Executive Secretary, will take part in a 20 October session outlining the European policies in the healthcare area and the European Commission Initiative on Breast Cancer in order to explain EA’s support to the EC through the EA Working Group dedicated to breast cancer services (EA BCS WG).
On 21 October, Jan van der Poel from the EA Executive Committee, the convener of the EA BCS Steering Group, will take the floor in a more technical session to give context to the proposed accreditation/certification standards for all stages in the Breast Cancer Care pathways.
To get full information about the PSIS event, including the key topics to be discussed and the draft agenda, please click here.
The outputs of the event, to be attended by about 60-80 experts in the fields, will include a publicly available report and an agenda for actions to be implemented in the breast cancer services area.
Additional information on the ECIBC is retrievable at the dedicated webpage of JRC Science
Hub: https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/research-topic/healthcare-quality
(News picture: cover page of the event booklet, consent to publication granted by JRC)