# Policy brief Belgian EBCP mirror group ‘prevention’ and ‘early detection & screening’ in cancer

## TL;DR

This policy brief discusses the importance of data linkage and monitoring for cancer prevention and early detection in Belgium.

## Contribution

The paper highlights the need to address barriers in data sharing and the adoption of new screening technologies.

## Key findings

- Comprehensive data linkage is essential for evaluating cancer screening and vaccination programs.
- Belgium needs to overcome human, technical, and legal barriers to improve data sharing for research.
- Emerging early detection technologies require more research before they can be implemented in screening programs.

## Abstract

The availability and linkage of comprehensive data on cancer mortality, incidence, screening and vaccination (HPV/HB) are essential for monitoring the process and impact of all screening and vaccination programmes, and to generate evidence to improve prevention policies. Linkage of data registries will allow better exploitation of real-world data. Simplification of data sharing for epidemiological research is of utmost importance. Human, as well as technical/technological and legal/regulatory barriers need to be tackled in Belgium to aid actors involved in screening, to facilitate organised linkage of data. Rapid advances in technologies for early detection and screening for a broad range of cancer types provide significant opportunities. Such tests are not yet ready for adoption in screening programmes. Emerging evidence should be monitored to ensure that promising innovations can transition to implementation studies in a timely manner. More and sustained research is needed to generate the necessary scientific relevance for new screening techniques in relevant cancer types.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13690-024-01368-4.