Forward together: A multi-stakeholder approach is key to a healthier Europe

Opinion by European Alliance for Peronalised Medicine (EAPM) Executive Director Denis Horgan

The concept of personalised medicine has been firmly grasped by many stakeholders, including the European Parliament and the Commission yet, despite amazing leaps in technology and knowledge plus the arrival of ‘big data’, take-up of this revolutionary way of treating patients has been relatively slow.

There are several reasons for this and one of the major ones is a seeming reluctance for collaboration, not only between health care disciplines and various players in the pharma industry, but also between member states.

To be fair, in the first case, researchers, industry and even patients groups have tended to work alone in the past, largely for competition reasons while, in the latter case, there most certainly needs to be better encouragement and facilitation by Europe’s policymakers and lawmakers to tackle the issues of fragmentation and, for example, needless, time-consuming and expensive duplication in research.

If the EU’s 500 million citizens across 28 member states are to benefit from a more personalised, individual approach to health care that will provide better, faster and more cost-efficient treatment then the ‘silo mentality’ has to be changed radically and swiftly.

Personalised medicine, or PM, promises much if the required changes are made but, according to Professor Louis Denis, director of the Oncology Centre Antwerp: “While there might not be a Tea Party in Europe, we certainly feel the need for change. Our system of health policies must change, but a number of stakeholders don’t feel like changing.”

Prof. Denis was backed up by the director of the European OrganiZation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC), Denis Lacombe, who said: “All stakeholders should leave their comfort zone. We are heading for new forms of clinical research for personalised medicine and all of us – that’s pharma, academia, payers, regulators – need to move forward to a new form of collaboration.”

PM is an innovative, speedily growing method of treating patients that uses as much available research, data and up-to-the-minute technology as possible to provide better diagnostics and follow-up for citizens than a one-size-fits-all model. In essence, PM uses genetic information to discern whether a particular drug or regime will work for a particular person and, crucially, helps a clinician to quickly decide which treatment will be the most effective.

Professor Helmut Brand, co-chair of the European Alliance for Personalised Medicine (EAPM), is of the view that: “Despite huge leaps in recent years, we are still quite a distance away from achieving the goals of PM. Some of the challenges facing patients and the health systems and industries that care for them include issues with different standards of health care in different countries, different price structures in many of them, and affordability problems when it comes to cross-border access for patients trying to get the right treatment at the right time.”

So, while there is no doubt about this marvelous new technology and innovative science, continued progress requires patients, clinicians, researchers, academics, industry partners, member states, policymakers, lawmakers and more to engage in meaningful dialogue, to collaborate and cooperate (often through public-private partnerships), to tackle interoperability issues, to facilitate cross-border access to treatment for those who need it, to reform clinical trials while opening them up to sub groups and much more.

No organisation, stakeholder or, indeed, member state can achieve this alone, which is why the EU has a major role to play in helping to build, encourage and facilitate a multi-centric approach to meet the challenge of European health care now and into the future.

With all of the above in mind, EAPM will hold its annual conference on 9-10 September in Brussels to bring together all stakeholders, including new MEPs. The conference is specifically timed to precede the appointment of the incoming European Commission.

Multi-stakeholder collaboration will be high on the agenda as part of EAPM’s ongoing STEPs campaign (Specialised Treatment for Europe’s Patients) and, through the device of involving all stakeholders in forward-thinking, cooperative dialogue, EAPM aims to realise the goal of making personalised medicine a key, effective part of the EU health agenda for the next 20 years and beyond.

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