On 7 July 2026, CANDLE joined the “Interoperability Meets Cancer” webinar, bringing together European projects and 20 experts working across cancer, digital health and the European Health Data Space (EHDS). The session was organised by CANDLE consortium partner ISCTE. The discussion explored a central challenge for Europe’s evolving health data ecosystem: how can initiatives working on primary use, secondary use, cancer research and patient access connect their work instead of creating new silos?
Opening the session, Henrique Martins (ISCTE) highlighted the need to bridge communities that have traditionally approached health data from different perspectives. As the EHDS moves towards implementation, interoperability needs to connect data generated in healthcare with its reuse for research and, ultimately, bring new knowledge back into care. Cancer provides an important setting in which to make this “circular use” of health data a reality.
CANDLE coordinator Lifang Liu (Health-RI) brought the National Cancer Data Node (NCDN) perspective into the discussion. Her key message: before interoperability can work across Europe, stakeholders need to align within countries. She described how different research communities may each develop their own “common” data models – only to discover that these models still need to be reconciled with one another. National Cancer Data Nodes can provide a coordination mechanism through which national communities agree on approaches, exchange expertise and connect to comparable initiatives in other countries.
Wiht further presentations by xShare and eCAN Plus, the session also identified further opportunities for collaboration with initiatives working on cancer registries, data standards, patient access and digital cancer care. Participants repeatedly stressed the need to reuse existing solutions, connect projects at the level of concrete use cases and standards, and bring project results into wider national communities.
