What solutions does Erasmus MC provide?
Early detection of disease by screening can considerably improve quality of life. Erasmus MC focuses their research on quantifying the health benefits, unfavourable side-effects, impact on quality of life, and cost consequences of screening programmes. They have so far made a number of important scientific contributions in the areas of:
- Designing, running and evaluating large-scale multidisciplinary population-based screening trials
- Evaluating existing (inter)national cancer screening programmes
- Guiding public health policies on screening using predictions of favourable and unfavourable effects and the cost of screening, based on micro-simulation modelling.
What makes them unique?
Worldwide, they are one of the largest research groups that examines the effects of early detection by screening. They are responsible for national evaluation of all Dutch cancer screening programmes using modelling, for more than 20 years already. Also, they are the only European partner in the U.S. National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Modelling Network (CISNET). They have also performed numerous country-specific quantifications of benefits and harms leading to national policies, using well-validated microsimulation model MISCAN.
What can they offer Colombia?
By applying local solutions in Colombia and improving cancer screenings and access, harmful healthcare procedures can be prevented, better quality of life can be gained and costs can be saved. Monitoring the current situation of cancer screening in Colombia, by using population based datasets, highlights the improvements that can be achieved. Furthermore, Erasmus MC can identify, using their microsimulation model MISCAN, the optimal cancer screening program for Colombia.