Wide consensus emerged at the Irish Presidency Conference on ‘Innovation and Patient Access to Personalised Medicine’ on the need for radical change if Europe's approach to healthcare is to benefit from the potential of personalised medicine. Declaring his support for the innovative responses that personalised medicine can offer to the challenges faced by health systems, Irish Health Minister James Reilly warned: "We are losing a lot of research from Europe because of red tape".

His remarks were echoed by John Perry TD, Irish Minister of State. "It is important that governments recognise the possible value for money from innovation, and that they ensure that the EU regulatory framework does not discourage progress", he said.

The ministers were addressing a conference in Dublin on "Innovation and patient access to personalised medicine", organised as part of the Irish Presidency of the EU by the European Alliance for Personalised Medicine.

Policymakers were joined by researchers, healthcare professionals, and representatives of patient associations and the healthcare industry in exploring how personalised medicine can effectively deliver "the right medicine for the right patient at the right time".

"Treatment of patients is changing from the current model, where a population is treated and some do not respond, to a model where a targeted population is treated and they all respond", continued Dr Reilly. "Personalised medicine promises a wealth of new possibilities for European patients, by making healthcare delivery as tailored to the individual as their fingerprints", he said.

Patricia Reilly, a senior adviser to European Research Commissioner Máire Geoghegan- Quinn, said "Personalised medicine should allow better prediction, prevention and treatment".

But there are many obstacles, she added. "Progress will depend on an unprecedented level of cooperation and collaboration. There is a pressing need to break down barriers and speak the same language".

Wide collaboration is essential since personalised medicine depends on the engagement of an unprecedented combination of stakeholders. Because it analyses individual biological information acquired from patients through new techniques, it requires interaction between the disciplines of biology, mathematics, statistics, pathology and medicine. It requires new tools in information technology and communication, new links between diagnosis and treatment, new research infrastructure, new approaches by regulatory authorities, and new relationships between doctors and patients.

The conference identified a series of crucial changes needed to secure the successful development of personalised medicine.
They include:

•  data protection laws that safeguard patients' privacy, but permit wider circulation of data for research and healthcare;
•  new collaboration mechanisms to move research results into health systems;
•  better coordination of regulation relating to pharmaceuticals, diagnostics and
• imaging;
•  information and communication technologies that can efficiently generate and
• analyse data;
• engagement of patients as active partners in healthcare, rather than passive
• subjects;
•  smart but robust clinical trial methodologies that respond to a new approach to data;
•  healthcare technology assessment that is attuned to the broader benefits of new
• approaches to medicine;
•  more flexible systems for pricing and reimbursement that effectively incentivise new
• approaches to healthcare;
•  enhanced training of healthcare professionals in proactive healthcare management;
•  support for public-private partnerships that can promote the wide collaboration necessary for the development of personalised medicine.

"It is an ambitious agenda, but one that will help transform healthcare and the quality of life of Europeans, by ensuring that European medicine is at the forefront of putting science at the service of citizens", concluded former UK health minister John Bowis and former European health commissioner David Byrne at the end of the conference.

Source: EAPM