The following centres have been awarded OECI Accreditation & Designation Certificates between September 2019 and March 2020).  We offer our congratulations to each of them for this achievement.

New accreditations

- TAYS Cancer Centre, Tampere (Finland) – OECI Cancer Centre

-  TYKS Cancer Centre, Turku (Finland) – OECI Cancer Centre

- Trinity St.

Because of the Covid-19 situation in Europe the OECI Oncology Days will be postponed and will provisionally be taking place on 16-18 June 2021. As a result, the Scientific Conference on Quality Assurance in Cancer Care, which will be organised under the auspices of the OECI A&D Programme, will take place on 17 June 2021.

The OECI Board has officially approved the new set of standards and the final versions of the standards are published (see attachments). The questionnaires are accessible in the web-based e-tool and will be made available for centres following the process of the A&D programme. The OECI A&D Management Unit, in close co-operation with the OECI Liaison office, is currently working on finalising the manual with the procedures and background information on the programme.

OECI has revised the set of standards for the OECI Accreditation & Designation Programme, following a rigorous evidence-led process, and this has resulted in what we believe are the world's leading quality standards for cancer centres. As from 1^st October 2019 OECI offers centres the possibility to apply for the Programme using the new Standards (Manual 3.0 revision 2019), although applications using Manual 2.

During the OECI General Assembly on the 21^st of June the OECI members have agreed to change the fee to participate in the OECI A&D programme. The change of fee is applicable for all applications from the 1^st of January 2020. The new fee will be € 45.000. 

The OECI A&D programme is in the process of revising the standards. They have been discussed with member centres during the OECI Oncology Days in Bari (19-21 June 2019) and are currently finalised. As per October 2019 centres can apply for an accreditation based upon Manual 3.0. From that moment, it will be possible chose the set of standards for which centres wish to be accredited. From the 1^st of January 2020 centres can only apply for certifications based upon the new set of standards (Manual 3.0).

OECI is leading workpackage 5 (WP5) of the EU Joint Action on Rare Cancers (JARC) on Quality Assurance.  One of the central pillars of the JARC is the support for the three cancer European Reference Networks (ERNs), EURACAN for adult solid cancers, Eurobloodnet for rare haematological malignancies, and PaedCan for childhood cancers. A related objective is to spur the creation or consolidation by Member States of new national networks of centres diagnosing and treating rare cancers.

The OECI Accreditation & Designation (A&D) Programme aims to help European cancer centres implement a quality system for oncology, and provide cancer patients in Europe with equal access to high quality cancer care, backed up by excellent training and translational research.

As part of the A&D programme a multidisciplinary team of professionals in oncology (nursing, medical, quality, research) visits cancer centres for a peer review.