#EAPM - Health-care training comes to the fore in Warsaw

A summer school to bring young health-care professionals up to speed in the fast-changing world of personalised medicine has been in full swing this week. writes European Alliance for Personalised Medicine (EAPM) Executive Director Denis Horgan.

More than 100 young HCPs and faculty members have gathered in Warsaw for a highly interactive event run by the Brussels based EAPM and its partner, the Polish Alliance for Personalized Medicine, and also in cooperation with the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Memorial Cancer Centre and Institute of Oncology in the Polish capital.

Given that today (21 June) is the longest day of the year, it’s perhaps fitting that there have been high temperatures in Warsaw matched by heated but valuable discussions in the summer school.

The summer school (which follows the first in Cascais, Portugal in 2016, and Budapest, Bulgaria, last year), centres around the concept of personalised medicine and has been tailored to the specific needs of individual patients, with a view to providing better treatment and preventing undesirable adverse reactions while fostering a more efficient and cost-effective health-care system.

Titled 'New Horizons in Personalised Medicine' it comes under EAPM’s TEACH banner (Training and Education for Advanced Clinicians and HCPs).

Personalised medicine absolutely starts with the patient. It holds huge potential for improving the health of many patients and ensuring better outcomes of health systems' efficiency and transparency.

Yet, its integration into clinical practice and daily care is proving difficult given the many barriers and challenges to timely access to targeted health care that still exist as of today.

If personalised medicine is to be in line with the EU and member state principle of universal and equal access to high quality health care, then clearly it must be made available to many more citizens than it is now.

Part of what is required is a long-term approach to education to ensure the translation of new therapies from laboratories to patients.

This means that all HCPs in close contact with patients or their patients' families need to be up-to-date with the current aspects of personalised medicine and its latest breakthroughs in order to better understand their patients’ concerns.

This third summer school aims to support the endeavours of EAPM to set up a Continuous Educational Programme on personalised medicine.

Recognizing that the patient is at the centre of his or her own treatment and health-related decisions, the summer school is focusing heavily on training in "how to communicate with patients" in several key areas.

EAPM and the faculty have long been convinced that an improvement in such skills among HCPs is vital to giving the right treatment to the right patient at the right time.

Beata Jagielska, the president of the Polish Alliance, and EAPM’s Executive Director Denis Horgan said in a joint statement today: “The summer school has been, yet again, a great success. The discussions and the interaction between the faculty and these young health-care professionals, who represent the future of medicine, has been lively, stimulating and, at times, contentious, and that’s all to the good.

“It has been wonderful to have these young experts here in Warsaw. Experts, yes, but still learning as they go along and benefitting from up-to-the-minute knowledge about a rapidly moving sector.

“Our aim is to reach ever-more HCPs and we hope that the EU will come up with a continuous education framework across all member states to keep Europe’s HCPs well-and-truly in the vanguard of personalised medicine.”

During the school, Professor Mario Pazzagli, of the Department of Biomedical, Experimental and Clinical Science at the University of Florence, Italy, spoke about liquid biopsies, telling the gathering that these are non-invasive blood diagnostic tests that detect circulating tumour cells and/or fragments of tumour DNA that are shed into the blood from the primary tumour and from metastatic sites.

The approach, he said, “can have an important diagnostic and treatment implication that can transform clinical oncology practice”.

It could help to provide patients with the right treatment for the right target without delay. Liquid biopsies also present a unique opportunity to move forward with understanding of metastatic disease development and may help to identify signalling pathways involved in cell invasiveness and metastatic competence, said Pazzagli.

“Moreover these tests have the possibility to be used in screening programmes at least for some kinds of cancer. At the end the liquid biopsy can revolutionise cancer care, providing clinicians with rapid access to information on a molecular level at diagnosis, thereby optimising treatment choices,” he added.

Also speaking were Sebastian Schmidt, Head of Strategy and Medical Affairs Computed Tomography at Siemens Healthineers, Germany, who told the HCPs about modern imaging in lung cancer, and Dr Peter Riegman, Head of the Erasmus MC Tissue Bank in Rotterdam, who talked about the recently enforced General Data Protection Regulation while emphasizing the need to share medical data across borders for the benefit of patients everywhere.

The young HCPs were very supportive of data sharing and keen to see this pushed hard going forward.

A presentation on personalised cardiovascular disease prediction and treatment was given by Prof. Željko Plazonić, State Secretary, Ministry of Health in Croatia, and one on genotype-directed therapy for advanced non-small cell lung cancer was given by Professor Jacques Cadranel, Head of Pulmonology Clinic at the Medical University Hospital in Paris.

Croatia’s health minister also highlighted that policy has to get up to speed with science, a huge issue in Europe as medicine is advancing so quickly.

As Beata Jagielska, the president of the Polish Alliance, put it: “The concept of personalised medicine has been recently rising in usage around the world. The belief that the number of personalised therapy recipients should increase is also growing in line with the principle of equal access to quality healthcare for all citizens.”

She added: “The summer school is aimed at doctors aged 28-40. Its most important goal is to bring the young specialists up-to-date with the latest news and discoveries, which in the future will help them to better understand their patients and thus select optimal therapies.”

Horgan added that: “Essentially, health services across the EU are creaking under the strain of not only having more patients with more chronic diseases but also tight fiscal controls.

“Member state health-care systems need to find innovative solutions, learn how to use resources in a ‘smart’ way, co-operate more, and ensure that any new workforce has the right skills for these changing times.

“We are also of the view that the EU should work to facilitate the development of an Education and Training Strategy for HCPs in personalised medicine, sooner rather than later.”

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