Unanswered questions in prostate cancer — findings of an international multi-stakeholder consensus by the PIONEER consortium

Abstract

PIONEER is a European network of excellence for big data in prostate cancer consisting of 37 private and public stakeholders from 9 countries across Europe. Many progresses have been done in prostate cancer management, but unanswered questions in the field still exist, and big data could help to answer these questions. The PIONEER consortium conducted a two-round modified Delphi survey aiming at building consensus between two stakeholder groups — health-care professionals and patients with prostate cancer — about the most important questions in the field of prostate cancer to be answered using big data. Respondents were asked to consider what would be the effect of answering the proposed questions on improving diagnosis and treatment outcomes for patients with prostate cancer and to score these questions on a scale of 1 (not important) to 9 (critically important). The mean percentage of participants who scored each of the proposed questions as critically important was calculated across the two stakeholder groups and used to rank the questions and identify the highest scoring questions in the critically important category. The identification of questions in prostate cancer that are important to various stakeholders will help the PIONEER consortium to provide answers to these questions to improve the clinical care of patients with prostate cancer.