One year since its launch, the EU4Health Joint Action CancerWatch has reached a number of important milestones in its work to improve the quality, timeliness and comparability of cancer data across Europe. The National Cancer Registry Ireland (NCRI) is a partner in the three-year European project.

Cancer registries play an essential role in understanding the burden of cancer and monitoring cancer outcomes. By systematically collecting and standardising population-based cancer data, registries provide the evidence needed to track cancer incidence, survival and prevalence and to assess the impact of cancer prevention and care.

However, producing high-quality cancer information can be resource intensive and time consuming, and differences in systems, resources and data collection practices can affect how quickly comparable information becomes available across countries.

Launched in September 2025, CancerWatch is working to address these challenges by strengthening cancer registration and developing approaches that enable high-quality cancer data to be collected, analysed and compared more efficiently across Europe.

As a partner in CancerWatch, NCRI is contributing its cancer registration expertise to this major European collaboration, alongside cancer registries and organisations from across Europe.

Significant progress in CancerWatch's first year

During its first year, CancerWatch has completed the largest survey of European cancer registries undertaken to date, involving 192 registries. More than 90% of registries approached completed the survey, providing an important baseline for understanding how cancer registration operates across Europe.

The survey examined areas including how registries are organised and funded, how quickly cancer data can be delivered and the capacity of registries to adopt new approaches and technologies. The findings will help identify what is working well, where challenges remain and where additional support may be required.

CancerWatch has also supported the 2026 Europe-wide cancer data collection for the European Cancer Information System (ECIS), helping to strengthen the evidence available for monitoring the burden of cancer across Europe.

Other important developments during the project's first year include:

• establishing a harmonised framework of data-quality indicators to support more consistent measurement and comparison of cancer data quality across countries;
• developing protocols for estimating cancer survival and prevalence across European countries;
• developing the first version of dedicated software for calculating survival and prevalence indicators, which is now being piloted with cancer registries;
• progressing work to help registries prepare for the European Health Data Space (EHDS), including work relating to roles, metadata standards, interoperability and the positioning of cancer registry data within national and European data catalogues; and
• collaborating with other European initiatives on approaches to data-quality labelling.

Together, these developments are helping to build stronger foundations for cancer surveillance and more timely and comparable cancer information across Europe.

Improving how Europe measures cancer outcomes

A key focus of CancerWatch is strengthening the data and methods that support ECIS, Europe's source of comparable cancer statistics.

Updated European statistics on cancer survival and prevalence are expected to be published in ECIS before the end of 2026, using work supported through CancerWatch.

Survival measures the probability of being alive a specified number of years following a cancer diagnosis, while prevalence provides information about the number of people living with, or who have previously been diagnosed with, cancer at a particular point in time.

Reliable and comparable information on these indicators is important for understanding whether cancer outcomes are improving, identifying inequalities between populations and assessing the impact of prevention, screening, diagnosis and treatment.

CancerWatch is developing harmonised methods and tools that will enable these indicators to be produced from cancer registry data in a more timely and consistent way.

As Manola Bettio of the Joint Research Centre, European Commission, explained:

“CancerWatch is helping to improve the timeliness and quality of European cancer indicators by making efficient use of the most recent data from cancer registries.”

Supporting better cancer control through better data

The work of CancerWatch also supports Europe's Beating Cancer Plan, which aims to reduce the burden of cancer across the EU.

Population-based cancer registries provide the evidence needed to monitor cancer outcomes over time, identify inequalities and assess whether policies and programmes in areas such as prevention, screening and treatment are making a difference.

Strengthening the quality, timeliness and comparability of this information helps ensure that policymakers, researchers and health services have more robust evidence upon which to base decisions.

Looking ahead

Over the remaining two years of the project, CancerWatch will build on the foundations established during its first year.

Work will continue on AI-assisted cancer registration, common data standards and digital tools designed to make cancer data collection more complete, consistent and efficient. The project will also continue supporting cancer registries as they prepare for the European Health Data Space.

For NCRI, participation in CancerWatch provides an important opportunity to work alongside European cancer registries and experts to contribute to developments in cancer registration and help strengthen the evidence available for cancer control both in Ireland and across Europe.

CancerWatch is a 36-month Joint Action running from September 2025 to August 2028 and is co-funded by the European Union through the EU4Health Programme. Coordinated by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, the project brings together 92 organisations across 29 countries, including 58 cancer registries.

Find out more about CancerWatch: www.cancerwatch.eu