-the polling of specialists has been paused this spring because of Covid, but restarted in late summer. It is our intention to gather sufficient input so we can add a few extra types of cancer.
-the results so far have been based solely on the opinions of the specialists within their own field of expertise. This has the advantage of reliability, but the disadvantage is that you may miss a few excellent centers. We are now developing a procedure to enhance this. It is based on a checklist of objective measurable criteria, that make it possible to audit other centers and add them to the list of excellent centers. The first such list is on cancers of the stomach and oesophagus, and the development is guided by the senior experts from the excellent centers we have so far. We plan to start this approach this year or early next year.
-we find it very encouraging to see that already there are many cooperations and projects between specialists and centers that are aimed at learning from each other and at actually undertaking improvement projects.
-the Dutch Federation of Cancer Patients is working on a large project, called Meaningful Patient Information with a similar aim as this website. We have the understanding between our projects that we make sure we are consistent, and that we avoid doing double work.