The Dutch Association of Hospital Pharmacists held its 2-day conference on 10–11 May. More than 200 delegates participated, which is an impressive number considering that the Netherlands has only around 450 hospital pharmacists and 100 hospital pharmacy residents.

The theme of the meeting was ‘Cotreatment of oncology patients by hospital pharmacists’ and the programme was chaired by Professor Lorraine Lie-a-Huen, Director of Pharmacy at Amsterdam University Medical Center, and Professor Henk-Jan Guchelaar, Director of Pharmacy at Leiden University Medical Center.

In the opening keynote, Mrs Jacky Turner of Guy's & St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust in London provided an extensive overview of how clinical pharmacy in general, and oncology pharmacy in particular, was developed in the UK. This was followed by an outstanding double lecture from clinical oncologist Dr Ferry Eskens. First he talked about the valuation of new cancer treatments by the Dutch Society for Medical Oncology¹; then he attempted to make sense of the variety of new nibs and mabs that all are trying to find a place …