#Brexit confusion…but personalised medicine following a clear path: Register now

The final leaving date of the UK from the EU is still up in the air with talk of extending Article 50 because, to put it bluntly, the British are simply not ready.

After two-and-a-half years of this, that and the other, those in Westminster are stepping ever-closer to a ‘No Deal’ cliff and a huge drop - a scenario that very few on either side of the Channel want to see.

So, it’s all still uncertain.

European Alliance for Personalised Medicine (EAPM) Executive Director Denis Horgan isn’t hanging around, however. He said: “Brexit or no Brexit, EAPM will hold its 7th Presidency Conference in Brussels on 8-9 April, with a half-day roundtable on lung-cancer screening on the 8th, just prior to the annual Alliance event.”

“Both will be held in during the Romanian Presidency of the EU,” Horgan added.

 The 7th annual event, entitled Forward as one: Healthcare Innovation and the need for policymaker engagement, comes on the back of the organization’s second annual Congress, which was held in Milan in November 2018.

This year’s main Alliance conference will, of course, be slightly different from most of its previous large-scale events, in that the 2019 edition will take place during the run-up to the European Parliament elections in May and the new Commission entering the Berlaymont further down the line. 

To register for the main conference, click here. To view the agenda, please click here.

More than 700 MEPS will be elected this summer and the Commission will also have a new president as Jean-Claude Juncker steps down. The incoming EU Executive will be tasked with devising and implementing regulatory frameworks in all areas, including certain aspects of health.

All bets may be off at the moment, but Brexit may actually have happened by the time of conference and this year, above all years, sees a clear need for the EU to take a leadership role in the arena of health care, both for Europe’s patients and citizens, as well as to create an ecosystem to generate necessary innovation.

On the other hand, we may still see the Brits campaigning for seats again if Article 50 is extended. 

Either way, the EAPM conference will allow for a bridge to national representatives in order to further build on the developments that the Alliance has helped to architect in various policy areas.

These have included clinical trials, data protection, genomics and the education of healthcare professionals. Meanwhile, the Alliance is actively engaged in the ongoing discussions surrounding HTA and the aforementioned campaign for EU-wide lung-cancer screening programmes.

The goal of EAPM is to make personalised medicine, as it fits into these areas, a political priority at national and regional levels, and conference will gather together large numbers of industry professionals, government regulators, patients, academics, and healthcare journalists to drive insights to action.

This 7th annual conference will attract hundreds of life sciences' thought leaders, with a key aim of the event, as ever, being to allow cross-fertilisation between the different disease and policy areas, allowing delegates to gain a greater depth of knowledge into barriers in the field of personalised medicine.

An over-arching goal of EAPM conferences is, of course, to engage politicians and lawmakers in the fast-growing field of personalised medicine, and deliver political asks through our consensus-based process.

Europe needs to grasp the fact that health equals wealth and that investment in research and innovation, alongside laws and rules that are fit-for-purpose and reflect the swiftly changing world of medicine, are vital.

Hence the continued interaction with MEPs, Commissioners and member state health leaders.

Key topics to be discussed in Brussels will include:

•   Personalised Medicine and the Innovation Agenda

•   Technology Developments

•   Hematology with respect to Personalised Treatment

•   Personalised Prevention

•   The Regulatory framework surrounding Pharmaceuticals and Diagnostics

Also up for discussion will be the impact of Brexit, plus a session on the Million European Genome Alliance, known as MEGA.

In the latter case, policy is vital in enabling the potential benefits of next-generation sequencing and the MEGA project, especially in diagnostics. While originally launched to garner a cohort of one million genomes for the benefit of healthcare research, MEGA now encompasses the sharing of all forms of valuable healthcare data, under robust privacy and ethical codes.

Once again, conference will bring together the different stakeholder streams in order to allow decision makers to understand changes that are required, across the spectrum of EU health-care systems.

It is also geared towards offering up valuable evidence and stakeholder opinion on which policy makers can base their decision making on how better to integrate personalised medicine into the EU’s healthcare services, and acts a one-stop-shop for all stakeholders in personalised medicine.

Lung cancer round table

Ahead of the conference, the round table will put forward the case for lung-cancer screening in an event entitled Saving Lives, Cutting Costs.

Post-event, EAPM expects to present a rationale explaining why current and incoming MEPs should support an EU-wide programme.

The Alliance has long had a focus on prevention, not least through screening programmes, and, during the course of several events on the topic since its formation, it has looked at the right preventative measures to ensure reliable and sustainable healthcare for the long-term benefit of patients now and in the future.

Among the arguments in screening’s favour are the fact that the long-awaited and now released NELSON study into computed tomography, or CT, screening for lung cancer showed that it reduces lung cancer deaths by 26% in high-risk asymptomatic men. The findings also indicate that with screening the results could be even better in women.

It is clearly time to move forward, not least in the context that the disease kills more Europeans than any other cancer.

It is well known that, in its early stage, lung cancer has a very good prognosis over a five-year period. This becomes much poorer in later stages, because treatment by then has little effect on preventing deaths. Screening is necessary and we need it now.

Most experts in the field have agreed (not least through the results of the NELSON programme) that Europe’s health systems need to adapt quickly to allow patients and citizens to benefit from early diagnosis of lung cancer and reduce mortality for this lethal disease.

Now is the time to persuade policy-makers across the EU that this is an urgent societal need. And that means that it’s a political need. Therefore, the final session will see ‘take-home messages’ floated for politicians.

Among the speakers at the lung-cancer screening event will be Corina Silvia Pop, State Secretary, Ministry of Health, Romania, Giulia Veronesi, Humanitas Research Hospital, Milan, and Regina Beets-Tan, of The Netherlands Cancer Institute.

Several MEPs will attend, including Cristian Busoi, Francis Zammit Dimechand Adina Valean, and they will be joined by Perm Rep Health Attaché.

Jorgen Vestbo, ERS Advocacy Council Chair, Harry de Koning, Department of Public Health, Erasmus MC, and a key representative from the European Commission will also take part, as will John Field, Professor of Molecular Oncology, University of Liverpool, Jan Van Meerbeeck, Head of ERS Thoracic Oncology Assembly, Hans-Ulrich Kauczor, Medical Director, Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, Heidelberg University Hospital, and Ewelina Szmytke, Vice-President, Lung Cancer Europe.

EAPM will be represented by its co-chair and renowned cancer expert Gordon McVie, alongside Executive Director Denis Horgan.

To register for the lung-cancer event, please click here.

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