Cancer is the second leading cause of death in Europe with an expected increase of about 25% by 2035. A wide and unacceptable variability in terms of access to research, innovation and quality care exists between and within countries. Possible solutions are an increase in knowledge by funding research, and a more equitable transfer of what we already know to everyone. Comprehensive Cancer Centers and Comprehensive Cancer Care Networks may be the core of CCIs that deliver quality care and provide resources to improve and integrate care, research and education. Data already available confirm that the level of "CCI maturity" in Member States is widely different, from some countries lacking CCIs completely. A European initiative, implemented in all Member States, based on a capacity building programme (CBP), will help reduce inequalities, in the context of other actions ongoing, such as CRANE, JANE and UNCAN. CBP is a complex intervention that requires multiple and integrated actions delivered to all the relevant stakeholders. CBP will be designed with an inclusive approach, tailored to the baseline status, capable of creating a change and improvement in research and care, with greater integration between them, supported by an education programme. It will operate at various levels: Individuals, Institutions and Systems. The CSA will implement the following steps: define CCI Maturity Model including quality indicators; profile the CCIs in each MS and a few ACs in terms of CCI presence and levels of maturity; design tailored CBP interventions, giving priority to MSs without any CCI; deliver online training courses open to teams in all MSs and ACs, implement targeted onsite interventions; scale up and sustain development; disseminate, exploit and report results. The CSA will maximize impact by bridging with the work of ongoing EU cancer research projects. National focal points will be key informants in making the links between the CSA, the EC and MSs.

OPTIMA is a multi-stakeholder-led consortium with the vision that each and every patient should have access to the most up-to-date individualised treatments and to innovative therapies. In that perspective, we will design, develop and deliver the first interoperable and GDPR compliant European real-world oncology data and evidence generation platform, along with decision support toolsets for prostate, lung and breast cancer. By designing this platform from the onset based on the needs of the clinicians and patients in an inclusive and sustainable way, OPTIMA aims to strengthen shared decision-making based on innovative data and AI-driven technology and tools. To achieve our vision, we have united the key partners from other data-driven European wide oncology initiatives (PIONEER, EHDEN, HARMONY) in our project along with Europes leading clinicians in the fields of breast, prostate and lung cancer that all have leading roles in medical societies such as ERS, ESMO, and EAU. At the core of the OPTIMA project are the major guideline offices of the three indications, whilst the project is further strengthened by patient advocacy groups, well-known academic partners and 6 SMEs as partners covering the needed expertise to implement OPTIMA successfully. The platform will build on existing open source solutions such as the OMOP-CDM, tranSMART and OHDSI ATLAS whilst developing novel AI models based on federated learning to facilitate knowledge discovery. At the start of the project, we will already have access to datasets covering over 200M people in Europe, along with data from high quality patient cohorts for AI model building. Moreover, the platform will be hosted in-kind on existing infrastructure provided by Helmholtz Institute in Germany. Finally, OPTIMA envisions sustainability of its platform through a value-based approach with various business models for commercial users.