On June 1-2, the European Commission (EC) held a conference in Brussels on Personalised Medicine attracting participation of a wide range of stakeholders: from researchers, policy-makers to industry and funders. The event opened in the presence of four Director-General of the EC, indicating how strategic and impactful the topic of Personalised Medicine has become.On June 1-2, the European Commission (EC) held a conference in Brussels on Personalised Medicine attracting participation of a wide range of stakeholders: from researchers, policy-makers to industry and funders. The event opened in the presence of four Director-General of the EC, indicating how strategic and impactful the topic of Personalised Medicine has become.
The conference focused on discussing five identified challenges among which: citizen & patient engagement, integrating Big Data and ICT solutions, or translating basic to clinical research and beyond. Jan-Eric Litton, Director General of BBMRI-ERIC, represented the European Research Infrastructures (RI) during a panel discussion where he stressed upon the central role played by RI in the field by providing access to samples, data and infrastructure.
The overall objective at European level will be to facilitate the move towards a patient centric healthcare model by developing common principles and practices that enable sharing of patient level data for research. It was highlighted that that health technology assessment will play a central role, so will the involvement of patients and the public. Data access and privacy issue, the necessity of a European Data Storage infrastructure and the sharing of clinical data were also some of the main arguments. It was noted that the digitalisation of the personal data has already been progressing and that its integration could add significant value to the research communities and citizens alike. It also was noted that the integration of biology and omics with the environment is required in order to get a full picture of the individual needs and the causality identification.
The International Consortium for Personalised Medicine (IC PerMed) initiative highlighted how necessary the collaboration between all stakeholders is in so as to advance the field to the benefit of patients and citizens. IC PerMed plans on officially launching end of 2016; the first objective of the consortium will be to draft the IC PerMed roadmap with actionable research activities that need to be undertaken to progress in the area of personalized medicine.
The conference focused on discussing five identified challenges among which: citizen & patient engagement, integrating Big Data and ICT solutions, or translating basic to clinical research and beyond. Jan-Eric Litton, Director General of BBMRI-ERIC, represented the European Research Infrastructures (RI) during a panel discussion where he stressed upon the central role played by RI in the field by providing access to samples, data and infrastructure.
The overall objective at European level will be to facilitate the move towards a patient centric healthcare model by developing common principles and practices that enable sharing of patient level data for research. It was highlighted that that health technology assessment will play a central role, so will the involvement of patients and the public. Data access and privacy issue, the necessity of a European Data Storage infrastructure and the sharing of clinical data were also some of the main arguments. It was noted that the digitalisation of the personal data has already been progressing and that its integration could add significant value to the research communities and citizens alike. It also was noted that the integration of biology and omics with the environment is required in order to get a full picture of the individual needs and the causality identification.
The International Consortium for Personalised Medicine (IC PerMed) initiative highlighted how necessary the collaboration between all stakeholders is in so as to advance the field to the benefit of patients and citizens. IC PerMed plans on officially launching end of 2016; the first objective of the consortium will be to draft the IC PerMed roadmap with actionable research activities that need to be undertaken to progress in the area of personalized medicine.
All presentations and de conference video’s are available online:
http://www.ec.europa.eu/permed2016
More information on IC PerMed can be found here.
