Current ECRM Projects

Impact of cancer research: a study of cancer research reported by the UK’ s British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)

There is increasing socio-political attention on demonstrating the impact of cancer research funding. Outside traditional metrics such as patients recruited to clinical trials and research publications there has been little research either in cancer research or other biomedical research domains into the wider public impact of research. The media (paper, TV and website) are now a key conduit for the dissemination of research publications and other results (e.g. conference abstracts) into the public domain, however, almost nothing is systematically known about how and what the media reports in terms of cancer research stories.

This project is focused on a single Member State – the UK – and the major source for cancer research stories,  namely the BBC. The BBC through its news website not only has a national impact but its syndication means that stories carried on its website and disseminated into other national and international media. This longitudinal study (looking at the BBC archive from  1998 to 2006) is research the site specific nature and type (e.g. lifestyle, drugs etc) of the cancer research stories carried, as well as the origin of the research and key commentators.

ImPact of Cancer Research : References on UK Cancer Clinical Guidelines
One way in which biomedical research can be put into practice is through clinical guidelines, which are increasingly used to guide the most effective treatment for patients.  There has been a substantially increased interest in them recently, and in the UK there are three series.  In cancer, there are 43 guidelines published to date, each of which has an evidence base in the form of references, many of which are papers in peer-reviewed journals.  This project aims to identify and analyse all these in order to determine their geographical provenance and type of research, in comparison with oncology research overall published in the peak years of guideline references (1999-2001). 

This project is part of the ECRM’s ongoing series of work into analyzing the impact of cancer research.

THE OUTPUTS OF CANCER RESEARCH IN THE UK AND DEVOLVED ADMINISTRATIONS (1995-2004)

The project is part of a small addendum to a major investigation of cancer research outputs and the funding of cancer research in Europe.  The outputs of researchers with at least one Welsh address are being compared with those in Scotland, in the UK as a whole, and world-wide. This study is looking at the relative level (how basic or clinical research publications are), impact factors and overall volume.

With the devolution of the UK specific cancer research strategies are being developed in each country. This baseline study was designed to provide pilot the methodology for similar situations in other countries , e.g. German Lander and provide high resolution data for studying the future impact of cancer research policy and funding in each devolved country.

Cancer Research Centres in the Europe and the USA: a comparative study using bibliometrics

There are widely different models of cancer research organization across Europe and the USA from centre-specific approaches to collaborative networks. The development of cancer centres has a long history both in the USA (through the National Cancer Institute) and Europe (mostly along Member State lines although an overarching European group – OECI – does exist). Whilst there have been various ad hoc expert commentary on these models there is no systematic objective intelligence on the current state of any of these centres.

This project is using bibliometrics to provide objective data on the trends in size, productivity, research level and impact of all major cancer centres in Europe (n=92)  and the USA (n=61)  over a ten year period (1996-2005). In particular this major study is collecting data on–

• integer and fractional count annual outputs from each centre
• mean research level (RL) of the centres’ outputs
• mean potential citation impact (PCI) of the centres’ outputs, determined from the mean citation counts in a five-year window to papers in the journals used
• actual citation impact (ACI) of the centres’ papers, based on a large sample of papers published in 2001 and cited in 2001 thru 2005
• comparison of citation rates of the individual centres’ papers on UK clinical guidelines concerned with cancer with the rates for the geographical regions concerned
• comparison of citation rates of the individual centres’ papers in stories appearing on the BBC health website with the rates for the geographical regions concerned.
• names and addresses of leading researchers at each of the UK cancer centres
• distributions of the mean RL and mean PCI values for the UK, EUR and US centres in the ten individual years
• trends in the mean RL of UK cancer centres over the decade
• percentages of papers from each of the UK cancer centres that are co-authored with foreign researchers, and with authors from the leading foreign countries.

The data from this project will be the first definitive comparative review of Cancer Centres in Europe and the USA.

The Economic Burden of Malignant Neoplasms in the European Union

Malignant neoplasms, more commonly known as cancer, are the second main cause of death after cardiovascular disease in Europe and are considered a major economic burden. Cancers cause 1.7 million deaths each year in Europe and over 1.2 million deaths in the European Union (EU) while being at the same time a major cause of years lost in early death. The main forms of malignant neoplasms in Europe, in terms of deaths and prevalence, are lung cancer, colon and rectum cancer, female breast cancer, and prostate cancer.

In economics, a cost or burden of illness study estimates the resources consumed in disease prevention, detection, and treatment. It aims to provide a potentially useful decision making aid for setting priorities in health care research. Cancers have an economic impact in the health care system, in family and friends who provide care for cancer patients, and on economic productivity because a large proportion of patients with cancer and the people who care for them would otherwise be in paid employment.