'EU patients need equal access to the best treatments', high-level forum hears

Opinion by European Alliance for Personalised Medicine Executive Director Denis Horgan

The Brussels-based European Alliance for Personalised Medicine (EAPM) is playing a key role at this week’s European Health Forum Gastein, calling for more EU co-ordination, collaboration, innovation, patient empowerment and equal access.

With an aging population of 500 million potential patients across 28 member states, health care is a growing burden on the European Union’s health services.

At Bad Gastein, the EU’s health policy community gathers once each year in the green Gastein valley in Austria to tackle issues in the health arena and EAPM has organised several sessions at the 2015 event, which concludes tomorrow (Friday 2 October).

Speaking at the event, Stanimir Hasurdjiev, a board member of the European Patients' Forum, said: “Today’s patients are more knowledgable than ever before and should be placed at the centre of their own healthcare decisions. Empowering the patient is, and always will be, a fundamental pillar of personalised medicine.”

He was backed by Luís Mendão, vice chairman of the European AIDS Treatment Group, who said: “You cannot treat a patient properly without taking into account his or her perceptions of value, you cannot treat a patient properly without taking into account that patient’s lifestyle and, of course, you cannot treat a patient properly without creating equal access across the EU to the best possible treatments available.”

Chris Hoyle, director, Health Economics & Payer Analytics, AstraZeneca said: “Making healthcare systems accessible and affordable to all patients, regardless of personal circumstances and location, should be a cornerstone of the EU’s pledge for equality for all citizens. At the moment, we are a long way off that.”

And Professor Angela Brand, of Maastricht University, added: “The leaps in science in recent years have been giant ones. The technology is out there, Big Data is out there, but we need to collaborate much better, invest more in research and innovation, and deliver again and again the message that patients are at the heart of their own health care.”

Professor Gordon McVie, of eCancer, said that, while personalised medicine is making huge strides in treating and caring for cancer patients: “Much more needs to be achieved through cross-border and cross-disciplinary collaborations coupled with a huge reduction in silo-based thinking.”

EAPMs sessions cover the topics of ‘New paths to personalised medicine: How Medicine’s Adaptive Pathways to Patients (MAPPs) and breakthrough designation will impact patients’, ‘How do we make MAPPs work for the patient?’, ‘Measuring value’ and ‘Empowerment in practice’.

The first session takes into account the fact that modern healthcare is being driven forward through an accelerating process of technological innovation. The powerful mix of genomics, proteomics and Big Data have created a tidal wave of new targeted and personalised therapies that address the particular needs of individual patients with increasing accuracy.

However, although the long-awaited promise of personalised medicine is finally staring to be realised, the regulatory structures required for their evaluation and reimbursement are still based around the models of the last century.

When it comes to making modern-day medicine work for the patient, EAPM believes that, while there are many perfect models and best practices to refer to, future health care must and will be defined around the patient experience.

The Alliance asked whether European patients are satisfied with their healthcare and, also, if innovative solutions exist that can improve the patient experience and reduce inequalities in access to quality healthcare across the EU.

Elzbieta Zawislak of Roche said that when it comes to measuring value in a world in which medical innovations are increasingly prevalent but healthcare budgets are constrained, it is important to find ways to optimise equitable access to health-care systems and treatments.

The EU Joint Action for Cancer Control aims to reduce the burden of cancer and decrease inequalities between member states. Yet in order to do so effectively, a broad definition of 'value' must be applied to facilitate universal access to cancer treatments. It is clear that new models of value are needed to take into account broader societal considerations, which are transposable and scaleable across chronic conditions.

Also, key in this brave new world of personalised medicine, is the fact that patients living with chronic diseases become experts in the management of their own condition. They are able to identify unmet service needs and point out waste and inefficiencies in the healthcare system.

Research has shown that patient-centred care models are cost-effective and lead to better outcomes and patient satisfaction. Patient empowerment can be a vital element of high-quality, sustainable, equitable and cost-effective health systems.

Important challenges in European health are demographic change and the long-term consequences of the financial crisis. Yet there is a need to secure access to, and affordability of, healthcare. Technological and social innovations are needed to empower the health system, the citizen and patient.

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