About > Research Program

As prospective international clinical studies become more complicated and prohibitively costly, it becomes imperative to tap into the wealth of data the EORTC holds on patient psychosocial/HRQOL issues to help patients, clinicians and governments make informed choices about cancer care.

During the last decade, the EORTC Quality of Life Department has made a concerted effort to evaluate psychosocial/HRQOL issues; health-related quality of life data has become a standard endpoint in most cancer clinical trials, often helping to provide information with regard to which treatment offers the best quality of life and the greatest improvement in psychosocial aspects of care.

Specifically, the EORTC has collected high-quality psychosocial/HRQOL data from over 120 clinical trials. These trials span all the major cancer disease sites and cover a considerable number of countries and, essential for authenticity, always uses the same HRQOL measure, the EORTC QLQ-C30. This tool is recognized as being the one most frequently used in oncology research. The data, collected in a robust and standardized manner, is a vastly untapped resource.

Therefore, The Quality of Life Department has developed PROBE, a research program, compiling a series of broad-based research questions, analysis presentation and dissemination of key-psychosocial/HRQOL findings in symposium and consensus-developed statements.