Evaluative Epidemiology

The mission is to increase knowledge on natural history, predictive factors, prognostic factors, prognosis and long-term effects of cancers/cancer treatments, mainly rare cancers, including childhood, adolescent and young adult cancers. 

The vision of the unit is to contribute to the definition of organisational models with a focus on collaborative network (e.g. rare cancer networks, adolescent and young adult cancer networks) at national and European level to create interoperable and reusable data networks/ecosystems for clinical and epidemiological research. 

The unit works with: 

• population-based cancer registries. The unit coordinates, together with the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, the EUROCARE project that analyses data from over 100 population-based cancer registries across Europe. 
• clinical registries. The unit coordinates the registries of the European Reference Network for Rare Adult Solid cancer ( EURACAN). 
• regional and national administrative databases. The unit coordinates the only Italian cohort of adolescents and young adults cured of cancer, integrating registry data with administrative data to define adverse effects and causes. 
• Oncology Working Group OHDSI (Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics) and OHDSI Italia 

The unit is based on data reuse through the search for innovative solutions to work with unstructured data, analytical approaches that preserve the privacy of individuals (federated learning) and initiatives on common data models that can help increase data interoperability. 

The unit invests in methodological research to propose new models to estimate outcome and indicators of cure, to work with small numbers (rare, childhood and adolescent and young adult cancers), to define causal model in a context of data availability and heterogeneity and therefore of ever-increasing complexity.