Genomics plays an emerging role in clinical and public health research.
Cancer is strongly driven by genomic modifications, and wide-profiling of these modifications with new technological approaches has become a major asset for (early) diagnosis, prognosis and therapy in regard to personalised medicine.

The CAN.HEAL consortium recognises that prevention, diagnosis and treatment should be approached in a concerted way for optimal benefit of patients and citizens.
The CAN.HEAL clinical arm, responding to the ‘Cancer Diagnostic and Treatment for All’, will focus on applying ‘next generation sequencing’ technology and identify implementation paths in order to:

• extend the application of genetic profiling of patients and tumour cells to allow harmonized data interpretation and facilitated treatment decisions,
• apply the same or similar diagnostic and therapeutic approaches to patients with comparable cancer profiles across the EU,
• take up the molecular tumour profiling biomarkers that estimate cancer predisposition to allow better counselling of family members regarding cancer risk.

In the arm on ‘Genomics for Public Health’, the application of novel insights on estimating cancer risks in healthy populations by polygenic risk score analysis within population wide interventions as well as strategies of remote genetic counselling and telegenetics will be further developed.

Finally, CAN.HEAL wishes to set the framework for integrating and aligning the Genome of Europe biobanking initiative into public health genomics for cancer.