NEXT ONCOLOGY – Supporting oncology through innovation

Oncology is the leading clinical field in terms of innovation when it comes to clinical trial activity, number of companies investing in the field, amount of new therapies and diagnostic tests under development, new product launches, and level of overall expenditure.

Technology plays a key role in advancing cancer patient management in all three aspects of medicine: prevention, diagnosis and treatment. Thanks to technological innovations, physicians can make more accurate and timely diagnoses, monitor patients more thoroughly and on a more personalized basis, and employ individualized, more targeted, and less invasive new therapies. In addition, technology enables the collection of large amounts of data on patients and the effectiveness of treatments, which can be analyzed using algorithms and artificial intelligence techniques to improve clinical decision-making.

The implication is that expenditure on research and development for cancer prevention, diagnosis and treatment is a significant investment worldwide. The American Cancer Society estimates that in 2021, worldwide spending on cancer research and development was $21.5 billion. This includes expenditure by governments, academic institutions and private corporations. Through the contributions of physicians and scientists, about 23,000 active cancer clinical trials have been registered as of March 2023, according to ClinicalTrials.gov.

At an academic level, hospitals, universities and research institutes are investing substantial resources into understanding the basic biology of cancer and in pioneering new approaches to patient care management. Service companies, the pharmaceutical industry, and biotech corporations focus their attention on developing new approaches and products to prevent, diagnose, and treat cancer.

Within both of these worlds, technological advances as well as the rise of new computational capabilities enabled by artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data will play a significant role in the future of cancer patient care management. In 2021, a record-breaking year, more new cancer drugs became available for the first time than in any other year ever (30 new cancer active ingredients launched globally), and many of these employ new technologies to improve the way patients are treated. During this meeting we will be providing the latest updates within the field of oncology with a focus on the use of new technologies for the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring of cancer patients. This congress will host physicians, biologists, scientists, researchers, engineers, physicists, mathematicians and other experts from relevant fields.

This panel of key national and international opinion leaders will be instrumental in representing the incredible level of innovation, discussing the latest advances in the field, exploring new possibilities for the future, and discussing the issues of equal and widespread accessibility to treatment, as well as the ethical implications related to the cost of such treatments.