#EAPM Congress - Forward as One: Integrating Innovation Into Europe’s Health-Care Systems

Greetings from EAPM!   For many of you, it’s welcome back to work after the summer holidays (which we all hope were enjoyable), while some of the luckier ones don’t return until 27 August. Either way, we at the Alliance know that all our members and partners certainly deserved the break, writes European Alliance for Personalised Medicine (EAPM) Executive Director Denis Horgan. 

It’s time to update you on the progress of the upcoming Congress. To remind you, things are gathering pace for the second annual event (following Belfast in 2017), with this year’s to be held in Milan from 26-28 November.  It will be held in partnership with the Regional Council of Lombardy, and will seek to match last year’s successful event in Belfast and, even at this early stage, more than 300 attendees have registered.  As a bonus this year, and to reflect the multi-stakeholder and inclusive nature of EAPM, the Alliance has launched a special registration offer. The time to register is now and ‘early birds’ will benefit from complimentary passes. The scheme is up-and-running here.

The event, under the title ‘Forward as One: Integrating Innovation into Europe’s Health-Care Systems’, will provide the ideal space to allow for a meeting of minds and expertise and represent a vital opportunity for top-level discussion and the formulation of real action plans.  There are a host of issues to cover, not least the fact that while improved health strategies and pharmaceuticals have extended the average lifespan, this has the downside that older people usually suffer from more than one chronic disease at a time, leading to an often permanent loss of health in their latter years. This is detrimental to quality of life and a clear burden on already stretched health-care systems.

On the upside, of course, it’s better healthcare provision that has brought about this increase in life expectancy. These days, if we take any particular age (within reason), people are more healthy than in the past and fewer die at a given age. So this offsets the healthcare spending and other death-related costs, at least to a degree.  Meanwhile, it has been shown that large differences in healthcare spending across the EU member states is not solely explicable by differences in demography, wealth, or access to the best technology. Other factors such as legal issues, private spending and other aspects of healthcare provision play a part, too. Health care is complex, and there are many differences across varying countries. This will all be up for discussion in Milan.  At the Congress, more than 1000 Life Sciences thought leaders are expected to convene and, as it did last year in Northern Ireland, the event will bring together key audiences who contribute to the vast programme content, themed tracks, and vital knowledge exchange.

Learn more, here.  

The aim is to pull together leading experts in the personalised medicine arena drawn from patient groups, payers, healthcare professionals plus industry, science, academic and research representatives.   The Congress will amount to an ideal ‘one-stop shop’ with the aim of bringing innovation into the EU’s health-care systems.

Over three days, attendees will be able to select from more than 60 breakout sessions (or 'Tracks') in key sector -elated areas including:
•    Access & Early Diagnosis Track
•    Diabetes Track
•    Diagnostics & Medical Devices Track
•    Education Winter School Track
•    Genomic | MEGA Track
•    Hospital Track
•    Lung Cancer Screening Track
•    Men's Health Track
•    Patient Track
•    Rare Diseases Track
•    Regional Track
•    SMEs Track
•    Translational Research Track

Also, more than ever this year, a focus will be on the 2019 European Parliament elections and the installation of a new College of Commissioners, tasked with devising and implementing regulatory frameworks in all areas, including certain aspects of health.  One of the key aims of Congress is to engage politicians and lawmakers in the fast-growing field of personalised medicine, and deliver political asks through our consensus-based process.  We would be delighted to have you with us in Milan and be part of this process, so please move quickly to take advantage of this year’s complimentary offer.

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