On 30-31 March 2017, the ExPO-r-Net consortium met in Padua for the 7^th ExPO-r-Net biannual meeting of the Executive Committee (ExeCom). The first good news was the announcement of the ExPO-r-Net project extension of about 6 months until the end of August 2017.
In her opening speech, Prof. Ladenstein (Coordinator of ExPO-r-Net and the ERN PaedCan) informed the consortium about the fact that all ExPO-r-Net activities will be embedded into the ERN PaedCan after its official finalization.

Overall, the meeting focused on project developments and activities to be carried out before the final meeting of the project in June 2017, and most importantly addressed the following points:

1. Project Dissemination (Samira Essiaf, CEO SIOPE): Communication material was distributed in over 30 meetings in the last 3 years (ExPO-r-Net E-Blast, SIOPE newsletter, ExPO-r-Net public website and intranet, flyers, banners, etc.) and statistics showed that an increasing number of people wanted to obtain some information about the project over the past years;
2. Common Vision of CINECA and AIT (Günter Schreier, AIT and Marisa de Rosa, CINECA): CINECA and AIT will collaborate to build the ‘Virtual Consultation System’, which will support the IT interoperability layer of the ERN and, thus, achieve a shared unified platform for the Paediatric Oncology community. The ‘Virtual Tumour Board’ (VTB) was illustrated during the meeting via a ‘Live Demonstration’;
3. Very Rare Tumours (Gianni Bisogno, AOPD): A common proposal for the Very Rare Tumour network across Europe was submitted;
4. Parents and Patients involvement (Anita Kienesberger, CCI Europe): Parents and Patients organisations were actively involved in on-site audits in Eastern European countries, organized by Jerzy Kowalczyk from the University of Lublin, Poland;
5. Evaluation- progress update and action points (Pamela Kearns, University of Birmingham): Economic analysis of VTB and IT systems are currently undertaken by Prof. Pamela Kearns and Richard Sullivan.