Background: The efficiency, effectiveness and accessibility of health services could be significantly boosted through their digitalisation. However, large differences exist within and between European countries in terms of the extent to which hospital workflows have been digitalised. To help address these inequalities, in 2025 a consortium of 81 institutions across 20 Member States of the European Union as well as Montenegro, Moldova and Ukraine launched the Joint Action (JA) eCAN Plus, an ambitious four-year project that is co-funded by the European Commission as part of Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan. It succeeded the JA eCAN, which concluded in 2024.
Objectives: JA eCAN Plus aims to reinforce the digital capabilities of cancer centres in Europe, with a special focus on Eastern Europe, by supporting them with the uptake of telemedicine solutions into the clinic and with the implementation of the European Health Data Space.
Methods: The JA is structured into nine work packages, all applying different methods to accomplish their goals. At its heart are three pilots and two use cases. The former are designed as clinical trials that investigate the feasibility and acceptability of using the tailor-made eCAN mobile application for conducting teleconsultations and for remotely monitoring patient-reported outcomes in the active treatment, survivorship and palliative care settings. The latter examine how healthcare professionals in and across the participating hospitals are exchanging health data in the context of virtual molecular tumour boards and transition planning. Besides these activities, the partners are undertaking literature reviews, surveys, interviews, focus group discussions and patient preference studies to co-create comprehensive training programmes with stakeholders, explore how social media can be leveraged to bolster cancer prevention, prepare a detailed guide for the reimbursement of oncology digital health tools, and map national policies related to eHealth. A foresight exercise is also planned to formulate future-focused recommendations for policymakers.
Results: One year after its launch, the JA has already finalised the scientific protocols for its telemedicine pilots, marking an important milestone, and allowing for the initiation of the ethics review process. Moreover, the existing infrastructure for engaging in digital collaborations has been analysed for each cancer centre contributing to the use cases, paving the way for the achievement of interoperability across a multitude of systems and platforms. Additionally, a taxonomy of digitally-enabled health technologies used for cancer diagnosis, treatment and follow-up has been developed, and stakeholder needs for eHealth skills building have been characterised. Furthermore, an update has been carried out of the eCAN policy mapping dashboard, and a Governmental Board composed of country-level decisionmakers has been established for validation of the relevance of project deliverables.
Conclusions: JA eCAN Plus is a major European initiative in the cancer field that is delivering on the European Commission’s commitments in this area. Over the next three years, the consortium will produce guidelines, best practices, strategy plans and educational materials that can facilitate digital capacity building in Europe and elsewhere.