EEC 2022 | Improving care in rare epilepsies on a national level through the EpiCARE network

EpiCARE is a European Reference Network for rare and complex epilepsies, established in 2017 to bring together highly specialized healthcare teams across 26 European countries. The EpiCARE network focuses on helping patients with rare and complex epilepsies through improving access to detailed diagnostics, enhancing education and training opportunities across the network, developing treatment protocols and monitoring standardized outcomes, and increasing opportunities for collaborative research. Reetta Kälviäinen, MD, PhD, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio University Hospital, Kuopio, Finland, comments on the achievements of the last 5 years, and the key next steps to drive progress through EpiCARE. Efforts to date have focused on improvements at the reference center level. In order to implement these improvements and enable equal care, Prof. Kälviäinen highlights the need for functional national care pathways. A working group has been set up within EpiCARE to help build these national networks. This interview took place at the 14th European Epilepsy Congress (EEC) 2022 in Geneva, Switzerland.