We believe innovation only matters if systems can deliver it — fairly.

Why we exist

Cancer care is advancing faster than ever — new molecular diagnostics, targeted drugs, cell therapies, vaccines, and advances in screening, imaging, surgery and radiation. But a breakthrough that a health system cannot afford, staff or fairly distribute is a breakthrough only on paper. Meanwhile, patients are sometimes treated more intensively than the evidence warrants, adding harm and cost without adding benefit.

We sit at that intersection. We follow innovation closely, and we hold it to a simple test: what can and should health systems do to ensure access, improve population outcomes, and avoid inequities? That is our prerogative, and the lens on everything we publish and build.

Why I started this

I am Maarten IJzerman, a professor of health technology assessment and cancer health services research. I started OncoSystems Hub because the question that interests me most is not usually the one being asked. Most of the attention in cancer goes to whether a new technology works. I have spent my career on what comes after that — whether a health system can pay for it, staff it and get it to the people who need it, and what happens to patients when it cannot.

That question has a different answer depending on where you are standing, which is why this is a collaboration and not a personal project. It brings together clinicians, researchers, health-system leaders and policy specialists who share a conviction that better outcomes come from better systems, not only from better science. If that resonates — as a contributor, a partner or a reader — you are welcome here.

— Maarten IJzerman, founder

The people I work with

Much of what appears here grows out of long-standing work with colleagues in Australia, the Netherlands, China, Singapore and the United States. Those five systems finance and organise cancer care in very different ways, and comparing them is the quickest way I know to separate the problems that are genuinely hard from the ones that are simply local habit. When something published here makes a claim about access or cost, it has usually been argued over first with someone who works inside a system where the answer comes out differently.

The Hub is sustained by a small group of collaborators who contribute content and review what we publish, so that what appears here stays accurate, current and useful. It is a voluntary, unpaid role, undertaken in a spirit of shared purpose rather than commercial interest.

They are based across seven regions, giving the Hub a genuinely global view of cancer systems:

As the collaboration grows, we will introduce each collaborator here with a short biography and a link to their professional profile. If you would like to contribute or review content, I would be glad to hear from you at info@oncosystemshub.org.