13 October 2026, CANDLE and UNCAN-Connect put the spotlight on industry in a dedicated webinar. As both cancer data holders and cancer data users, industry is an important stakeholder to consider when building the UNCAN.eu Platform and the National Cancer Data Nodes.
Lifang Liu (Health-RI) and Kadi-Liis Veimann (ESTCAN, UNCAN-Connect) welcomed over 30 participants from industry and research.
Jayden Khakurel (ESTCAN, UNCAN-Connect) gave an introduction to the future UNCAN.eu platform and highlighted what it can offer to industry – covering easier discovery of cancer data, assessment of suitability of datasets, access pathways, research services and more.
Lifang Liu (Health-RI, CANDLE) explained how National Cancer Data Nodes implement UNCAN.eu’s goals on national level. She highlighted CANDLE’s working groups that address concrete ways to refine the functions of Naitonal Cancer Data Nodes and ensure they delivera value to their users.
In the following session, three distinguished industry practitioners presented their practices and challenges regarding cancer data.
Bohdan Petryshak from start-up Better Medicine (Estonia) presented the company’s AI cancer detection system. He highlighted data needs acrooss the AI lifecycle phases and associated challenges – like curating multi-modal data.
Cristóba Bernardo-Castiñeira from SME Bahia Software (Spain) presented their system to improve oncology workflows, that is applied in Comprehensive Cancer Centres. He higlighted the importance of structured clinical data, with good metadata and governance,
Erika Schirghuber from Roche (Switzerland) presented how the company generates evidence from cancer data to accelerate reserach and development and improve patient outcomes. This evidence generation is closely linked to solid data governance and management.
In the subsequent discussion, the speakers reflected on the most valueable tangible outcomes they would like out of a collaboration with UNCAN.eu and National Cancer Data Nodes. Important aspects mentioned included data standardisation and quality assessment, comon data models and adaptability to evolving projects.
In a final block, participants built a cancer data industry persona, describing her goals, pain points, needs and skills, led by Carola Schulz (empirica, CANDLE).
