Comment to the letter by SEOR, ALATRO and SPRO to the editor in response to ESTRO 2012 Strategy Meeting: vision for Radiation Oncology (published April 2012)

ESTRO received with satisfaction the comments of SEOR, ALATRO and SPRO on our published Vision. We are especially appreciative of the encouragement for the Vision’s capacity to support radiation oncology as a key player in the multidisciplinary field, with the possibility to lead the patient relationship. The portfolio of our European Society has many different fields to support the positioning of its discipline. Internally, ESTRO has to provide a clear profile of its identity and an appropriate and easily understood language to describe its characteristic. This is what the Vision document and the continuous process of Core Curricula are doing, furthermore based on these ESTRO invites other disciplines to participate in our scientific and educational activities and supports its members’ training in multidisciplinary and leadership. It will be interesting to see member participation in a live tumour board simulation for different tumour sites that will be offered at ESTRO 33, to support daily practice. With other discipline or organ oriented European and extra European societies, ESTRO finalised reciprocal collaboration and fields of common areas like guidelines, education programmes and oncopolicy lobbying. In the last years ESTRO has been invited in growing numbers to meetings of other European societies to share our expertise, as well as to manage courses and master classes. Significant is the next publication of joint guidelines between ESMO/ESSO/ESTRO on gastric cancer, which opens an era of closer collaboration amongst these three societies in oncology. With national societies, ESTRO’s services have become more and more relevant for them being related to educational topics by UEMS, cost-benefit aspects of new technology and specific requests of individual countries. ESTRO has established the HERO programme to provide online services to evaluate cost-benefits of new technologies across different European health systems and a new National Societies Committee to optimise the liaison between ESTRO and its services, and the needs of individual countries. With the EU and other international agencies ESTRO is collaborating through ECCO as an allied partner lobbying to politicians, and not governmental organisations, the profile of our discipline and its contribution to multidisciplinarity. ESTRO is an established partner in influencing world recognised organisations like IAEA, UICC, WHO and is strongly committed to support the ongoing renewal of the main goals and characteristics of ECCO to be more effective in oncopolicy and in multidisciplinarity. With patients and their organisations, ESTRO is trying to better understand their needs and to support a patient’s journey across our treatment services, organisational procedures and ethical perspectives, namely in collaboration with ECCO. The ESTRO Clinical Committee is opening a new window to this direction with a sensible and effective hub of the different patient needs and expectation across Europe. On top of what the ESTRO can do through its programmes there is a need for dedicated people to serve our patients in a time of limited sources without losing the value of our activity, the trust in the cost-effectiveness of our treatments, and the reliability of our expertise. We are happy to receive a letter like this one that testifies to the individual and Society commitment open to larger collaboration, recognising in ESTRO a definitive partner.