"C" is for costs, and cancer, and conference: Highlights of the First European Conference on the Economics of Cancer

The first European conference on the economics of cancer was held in Brussels, Belgium on November 19-21, 1997. This international meeting was organized under the European Organization for Research and Treat ment of Cancer. Approximately 300 participants from around the world, including physicians, health care econ omists, epidemiologists, pharmaceutical industry repre sentatives, pharmacists, and other researchers, clinicians, and administrators attended the sessions. This interna tional mix of professions, along with the 12 plenary sessions, 4 tutorials, and over 100 contributed oral and poster presentations, made for a very interesting and informative conference. This review will focus on out comes measurement tools, pharmacoeconomics in clini cal trials, issues regarding the improvement of the quality and usability of pharmacoeconomic evaluations, and state of the art pharmacoeconomic reviews of hematopoietic growth factors and lung cancer. Abstracts of contributed presentations have already been published.1