The patient pathway in Childhood Cancer (from diagnosis to treatment and all through to survivorship) is extremely complex and individualised. Despite the tremendous efforts made to set up specific clinical and research frameworks that address the needs of children and young people with cancer, the fact remains that Childhood Cancer is a rare disease. As such, unconnected data silos still exist and this fragmentation is often caused by the lack of a common approach for the definition, application and interconnection of data in the healthcare realm. Artificial Intelligence can be key in bringing a solution to these challenges.

UNICA4EU‘s vision is to lay the foundation of an ecosystem that will facilitate the upscaling and wide-scale application of Artificial Intelligence to Paediatric Cancer in the next ten years, positioning Europe as the worldwide benchmark in the field. The initiative will bring together the multi-disciplinary networks of stakeholders required to strengthen the reference knowledge base for the Paediatric Cancer investigation and promotion. Collaboration is at the very core of UNICA4EU: the team brings together medical and research institutions working on Childhood Cancer, patient, parents and survivor advocacates, cutting-edge expertise in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, bioinformatics and computational biology, and experts in community building and impact creation.

The UNICA4EU project (Grant Agreement 101052609) includes activities to ensure that patients’, survivors’ and parents’ rights regarding data sharing and data use are being protected, and that their needs regarding patient friendly information and education about the use of Artificial Intelligence technologies are met.