Report on the call for feedback about the scope of the European quality assurance scheme for breast cancer services

In 2015 the European Commission Initiative on Breast Cancer (ECIBC) started the development of a voluntary European Quality Assurance scheme for Breast Cancer Services (the European QA scheme) through the technical and scientific coordination of the Directorate-General Joint Research Centre (JRC). To support the JRC in this task, a Quality Assurance Scheme Development Group (QASDG), consisting of independent experts, was established. The European QA scheme's scope (The Scope) represented the first output of the development process of the European QA scheme. Via a public call, stakeholders and individual citizens were invited to provide their feedback on The Scope. The call was open from 17 February to 9 March 2016 and an on-line questionnaire via the EU Survey platform on the ECIBC web hub was made available. The JRC received a total of 63 valid responses from 15 individuals (24 % of total valid responses) and 48 organisations (76 %). Individuals and organisations from 23 out of 28 EU Member States (82 %) contributed to this exercise. During a meeting held in Varese (Italy) in March 2016, QASDG discussed how the results of the call for feedback should be reflected in The Scope. Decisions taken during that meeting were recorded in the meeting's minutes and The Scope was modified accordingly. The final version of The Scope was approved by QASDG on 16 May 2016 and was later made publicly available together with this report.