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EAPM: Why increasing trust between stakeholders must be way forward for health

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Good morning, and welcome one and all to the first European Alliance for Personalised Medicine (EAPM) update of the week. We come off the back of a busy month for EAPM in October, following our 1 Million Genome meeting and German EU Presidency Conference, as well as engagement with the EU Beating Cancer Plan, which is aiming to set the framework to tackle cancer. And, a little later this week, there is the monthly EAPM Newsletter to look forward to, writes EAPM Executive Director Denis Horgan.

Trust and governance

Despite member state competence in many areas, there is undoubtedly a need for common European health legislation as much as possible, but it must be the right legislation. Unfortunately, experience has shown that having separate rules in every member state does not really work, for a variety of reasons. For example, it often leads to an R&D environment that is not competitive, slows the innovative dynamic and ultimately represents a barrier to the emergence of effective therapies for untreated disease. With more integration, collaboration, dialogue and increased trust among each and every one in the field, stakeholders can help mould the right frameworks, in the right place, at the right time. More about EAPM’s aims in this regard later.

Europe needs 'serious acceleration' in fight against coronavirus: WHO

Europe needs a “serious acceleration” in the fight against the coronavirus and a lack of contact-tracing capacity could drive the disease into the darkness, a top World Health Organization official said on Monday (26 October). In Europe the picture is unrelentingly grim as a string of countries reported record increases, led by France, which posted more than 50,000 daily cases for the first time on Sunday, while the continent passed the threshold of 250,000 deaths. The 46 countries at World Health Organization level accounted for 46% of global cases and nearly one third of deaths, said Mike Ryan, the WHO’s top emergencies expert. “Right now we are well behind this virus in Europe, so getting ahead of it is going to take some serious acceleration in what we do,” Ryan told a news conference.

Placing confidence in the hands of others

From man's earliest ventures into health care, when shamans, priests or medicine men ministered to the sick, trust has been at the centre of the compact between patient and carer. People at their most vulnerable moments choose to place themselves in the hands of others, in the confidence – or at least the belief – of benefit and relief. That compact remains just as valid in today's world of science and technology. The rapid development of medicine in the last 50 years, and more particularly the exponential leaps of the last 25, have created opportunities unimaginable only a couple of generations ago. Genomics is increasingly permitting a focus on the underlying nature of disease – and the underlying processes of health. As a result, at one end of the scale there is a growing ability to treat smaller populations – with orphan drugs for rare disease, or validated paediatric medicines, or advanced therapies, and with an unfurling range of possibilities as personalised medicine evolves. And at the other end of the scale health authorities begin to tap into a wealth of information about health trends, susceptibilities and the value of distinct treatment options that can radically improve health systems management.So the trust invested in the shaman is even more crucial today. The emergence of evidence-based medicine and organised health services that are overseen by governments entitle patients to a degree of certainty that their best interests are being attended to on the basis of reason and equity as well as of faith.

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Council welcomes prospect of European health data space

The European Council has welcomed the European strategy for data, which supports the EUʼs global digital ambitions to build a true European competitive data economy. The European Council welcomes the creation of common European data spaces in strategic sectors, and in particular invites the Commission to give priority to the health data space, which should be set up by the end of 2021, and which is being cited as a means to strengthen the immediate response to COVID-19.

And it is not just the Commission that’s working on digital health, with the World Health Organization also presents its global strategy for digital health, which is set to be brought to the World Health Assembly in November. The WHO is currently putting together an investment case to implement this strategy, with member state approval being awaited, the WHO’s Chief Information Officer Bernardo Mariano Jr has said. But public trust is again a big consideration, with critics asking whether people will be willing to share their data on a pan-EU platform, and whether governance will be equired to ensure full participation.

Improving precision and power in randomized trials for COVID‐19 treatments

Time is of the essence in evaluating potential drugs and biologics for the treatment and prevention of COVID‐19. There are currently 876 randomized clinical trials (phase 2 and 3) of treatments for COVID‐19 registered on clinicaltrials.gov. Covariate adjustment is a statistical analysis method with potential to improve precision and reduce the required sample size for a substantial number of these trials. Though covariate adjustment is recommended by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency, it is underutilized, especially for the types of outcomes (binary, ordinal, and time‐to‐event) that are common in COVID‐19 trials. In simulated trials with sample sizes ranging from 100 to 1000 participants, there have been substantial precision gains from using covariate adjustment–equivalent to 4–18% reductions in the required sample size to achieve a desired power.

EAPM to discuss trust and governance in early 2021 upcoming Presidency Conferences

In Europe, the interdependence of member states makes it both necessary and desirable that much of that task of oversight is organized at EU level. It is, inevitably, of course, a more complex compact nowadays. Each component of the systems on which people now routinely depend for their health has to fulfil its part of the bargain. These issues of trust will be discussed in EAPM’s two presidency conferences being planned for January and July 2021 that will address these elements of governance.

Health minister cites ‘strongest EU position on WHO in years’

German Health Minister Jens Spahn has recently spoken of “the strongest EU-level position concerning WHO at least in recent years”. Spahn added that he advocates “for a stronger role of the EU” in the WHO and in global health in general. “We should not leave [it] to the USA and China to call the shots,” he said. 

Public consultation on breast implants

On Friday (23 October) the European Commission launched a public consultation on a preliminary opinion on the safety of breast implants. The Scientific Committee on Health, Environmental and Emerging Risks (SCHEER) opinion is based on anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL). Interested parties can submit their comments by 7 December.

Intensive care units ‘could be overrun in weeks’ warns WHO

The World Health Organization has warned that intensive care units in Europe could be overwhelmed in a matter of weeks and that immediate action was essential to prevent essential health systems collapsing and schools closing. In many cities around Europe, the capacity for ICU is going to be reached in the coming weeks,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead for COVID-19. WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that the entire world, and particularly the northern hemisphere, was at a “critical juncture”.

And that is everything for now – do look out for the EAPM Newsletter, which will be available later this week, and stay safe and well.

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EU Reporter publishes articles from a variety of outside sources which express a wide range of viewpoints. The positions taken in these articles are not necessarily those of EU Reporter.

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