Precision Medicine: Time for a European Transformation

An article to be published in the Journal of Biomedicine explains the imbalance between the latest scientific evolutions and real life patient issues. Even now, regulatory agencies, governments and funding agencies underestimate the integration of scientific research into health care and vice versa.

Clinical research has seen a remarkable evolution in the last few years. The increasing knowledge with the emergence of new technologies has enabled a greater focus on the identification of mechanism-based therapies. However, the issues of drug development are too complex to be tackled in isolation.

Large amounts of data and optimized information technology solutions stored into centralized platforms would help managing the specific patient needs. Decisions taken exclusively from real-life data carry uncertainty. Health care systems cannot afford such uncertainty and therefore are prone to support the solutions coming from research and integrate them into care, in order to improve efficiency.

The article will explain the elements need for optimal access to clinical trials and enable benchmarking clinical research as well as real life. Ensuring a healthy alignment of competences will help identifying research findings leading to better and affordable health. Solutions that bring the latest scientific results to patient care will require new partnership models where stakeholders work on a more open agenda even in the early stage process of development. It is urgent that European bodies who have the capacity to stimulate such integrations get their acts together if we want to make precision medicine an assigned rather than a fortuitous happening, generating false hope for the patients and the scientific community. A re-discussion of the architecture of the process from “omics” to health technology and economics based on outcome-focused systems is really needed. A wise use of anti-cancer treatment will inevitably impact the value of cancer care as well as health care systems.

Come at 1st EAPM Congress (27 – 30 November 2017, Belfast North Ireland) and visit our stand 12 in the exhibition hall.