COCIR highlights role of medical technologies in helping prevent cancer-related premature deaths

Today is World Cancer Day 2017, and COCIR is honoured to support its ambition of significantly reducing the illnesses and premature deaths caused by cancer by 20201. COCIR is also proud to highlight the increasingly important role that medical technologies play in achieving these goals, by improving prevention, screening, early diagnosis, treatment, care and palliation of cancers.

COCIR member companies develop and manufacture medical imaging, Digital Health and radiotherapy technologies and solutions that are constantly improving the entire cancer care pathway. They are continuously investing in research to make screening and treatment more effective, affordable and accessible to the widest possible population.

COCIR Secretary General Nicole Denjoy says:

Our organisation fully supports the aims of World Cancer Day. We believe that it is vital to maintain the widest public focus on this disease and to raise awareness of the continuing advances in treatment. It will help ensure policymakers and payers make full use of all available innovative technologies and treatments.

She continued:

Realising the full potential of modern medical technologies will contribute in maximising the benefits from earlier, accessing to more accurate diagnoses and to the improved outcomes this will bring. It is vital that as many patients as possible have access to modern diagnostic tests, early screening, and treatment.

Medical imaging is increasingly important in advancing and improving cancer treatments. Powerful and effective non-invasive technologies make screening increasingly effective. This is driving earlier detection and intervention, improving outcomes and survival rates. Medical imaging also helps validate whether highly-targeted precision therapies are proving effective, allowing patients to have their treatments adjusted for the best available outcomes. Meanwhile, advances in radiotherapy are allowing care teams to treat and manage disease with increasing accuracy while reducing radiation doses at the same time. Combinations of modern imaging techniques and radiotherapy allow tumours to be targeted with previously unimagined levels of accuracy.

Meanwhile, the increasing power of Digitalisation in health is improving the care flow and the patient journey. Ability to share data quickly, in a safe way and accurately between all stakeholders in the patients’ care – including the patients themselves - is making true multidisciplinary care a reality. The efficiencies that Digital solutions bring to healthcare, particularly in the management of complex conditions such as cancer, will increasingly free up limited resources and allow more patients to benefit.