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Dr. Gijs Geleijnse IKNL Netherlands Comprehensive Cancer Organisation |
Motivation for standing for election
European cancer registries play a crucial role in understanding and managing the burden of cancer in the area. However, resource constraints and data protection regulations are posing significant challenges to deliver stakeholders with timely insights. To address these challenges, I believe there is opportunity to strengthen the organization of cancer registries in Europe, to foster collaboration and innovation for the collective benefit of all registries. During my term on the ENCR Steering Commitee, I aim to address three key opportunities:
1. Enhancing ENCR's Position and Collaboration: As the European Health Data Space and initiatives like UNCAN.eu's European Federated Cancer Research data hub emerge, ENCR can solidify its role within the European cancer data landscape. Establishing ENCR as a legal entity may facilitate obtaining funding through the EU Cancer Mission and Beating Cancer Plan. Further support from these programs will bring capacity to innovate and create impact.
2. Improving Data access and availability. Various interpretations of the GDPR and complex legislation for data sharing both within and with countries outside the EU/EES continue to challenge cancer information at the European level and our ability to research cancer inequalities. With my experience in the development and governance of federated registries, I aim to co-create and implement a novel infrastructure the management of the European Cancer Information System, understanding needs and realities of the various cancer registries across the continent.
3. Enhancing Data utilization and impact. Where data collection strategies are specific to the situation of each registry and healthcare system, we can reuse ideas, methods and software on utilization of cancer registry data. By creating a culture of findable, identifiable, accessible and reusable (FAIR) open source software and scripts, the collaborative creativity of our epidemiologists, software engineers, data scientists and experts alike can be beter utilized. I intend to create a community in ENCR on innovation, analysis and software such that results can be more easily transferred to different geographies. Moreover, I aim to set-up a special interest group on communication and demonstration of societal impact may help registries to inform their stakeholders and quantify their value.
Short CV
Dr Geleijnse is leading the Data Science team at IKNL and oversees IKNL’s innovation program. He holds a MSc in Computer Science and PhD in Artificial Intelligence. After over 12 years’ experience at Philips Research as industrial scientist and project manager in clinical informatics he is now affiliated to IKNL since 2017 . He is interested in means how novel technology and data can be used to improve decision making and improve our understanding of health and care. At IKNL, he works on innovations centered around the Netherlands Cancer Registry. He addresses ways to make the flow from patient record data to insights faster and more effective. In several projects, he explores how Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs) can be used to support cancer registration and help to mitigate the current challenges in data sharing. He is involved in several Horizon projects shaping the European Health Data Space1 and pioneering the establishment of modern, federated registries. He leads the Blueberry project, with the goal to establish a sustainable, scalable European clinical registry for rare solid cancers in adults (EURACAN ERN). In DARWIN-EU, he works with the European Medicine Agency on data harmonization, quality and federated analyses. Besides the work on the set-up of a modern registry, Dr. Geleijnse is committed to transform cancer registry data to valuable information for the various stakeholders. Innovations such as the Dutch Cancer Atlas, the synthetic Netherlands Cancer Registry dataset and prediction models and personalized statistics for patients to support shared decision making in daily clinical practice contribute to the registry’s societal impact.