eTEN News from the projects: EUROCET

ACTIVITIES :: eTen :: News Room :: Eurocet

EUROCET: a dissemination event

The EUROCET project started on 1 September 2005 with the aim of validating a registry aimed at collecting public, official and updated figures on organ, tissue and cell donation and transplantation activities in participating Member States. The project builds on the successes of the EURODONOR project and extends this service to six new Member States: Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.

EUROCET establishes a common registry for the collection of data on organ, tissue and cell donation and transplantation activities across multiple Member States. The online registry helps medical professionals improve patient care while also bringing about common standards within different regulatory and cultural environments.

The portal should also be the means to inform citizens, providing them the knowledge tools to fully understand all issues related to the transplantation process.

The creation of a registry is a means to achieve higher value objectives, such as:

delivering updated and official information to all European citizens, patients, professional operators and institutions,
reducing the technological gap between IT friendly countries and not IT friendly countries through a best practice and know-how sharing,
facilitating the information-flow between experts and raising transparency in every phase of the process,
improving co-operation among European countries for building a European culture and deontology towards donation and transplantation,
setting the grounds for a general improvement of quality and safety in this field;
supporting Institutional Bodies through the project results,
increasing public awareness and sensibility towards the value of donation at the social and human level.

The second Eurocet dissemination workshop took place on 7 February 2007 at the European Parliament premises in Brussels. The workshop aimed at disseminating the project results, including the completion of the database of 15 Member States' national data represented in the project.

Representatives of the European Commission, national competent authorities for tissues and cells, policy makers of the national health divisions, transplant organisations, scientific societies and professionals of the field attended this event with high interest in project results and its future deployment. Some project partner organisations illustrated specific aspects connected with the project and with the social and political background.

Moreover, the Italian Citizen Association, the Italian Organ Donor Association and European Registry for Bone Marrow Transplantation (EBMT) presented the utility of a transplant portal for both citizens and professionals of the field.