As Chief Executive of Tenovus I give you two observations of the ECCO congress this year. Given that charities pay for half of all cancer research in Europe and a fair bit of cancer care where are all their Chief Execs? Looking at the delegate list there are very few. If the sector is going to be responsible for innovation and a certain amount of risk taking perhaps the organisers of ECCO should consider that market in 2009.

Second observation: patients still go to patients’ workshops nurses to nurse ones

urologists to urology sessions etc how can we encourage cross over and better communication between each of us involved in the cancer world? This week at NCRI (National Cancer Research Institute) conference at Birmingham UK I was impressed at the multi disciplinary make up of the audiences for example a surgeon at the complementary medicine session who came to broaden his mind (I don’t think he had heard of homeopathy) but I was also shocked hearing of medical oncologists not entering patients into a trial involving healing even though funding had been approved.

By the way I don’t spend all my time at conferences this is an exceptional week!