Policy issues

The Health Directorate of the European Commission's DG Research and Innovation organised the conference European Perspectives in Personalised Medicine, in Brussels on 12 -13 May 2011. The conference took place at the Square Meeting Centre, in the presence of John Dalli, Commissioner for Health and Consumer Policy, and with the support of Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science.

The conference aimed to take stock of recent achievements in health related research leading to personalised medicine and helped to identify and prioritise future actions needed at the European level. It brought together over 450 European and national level policy makers, industrial and academic researchers, patients, clinicians and other stakeholders.

A conference report is available: here ( 424KB)

A conference summary report is available: here ( 159KB)

Please consult the list below to view conference material:

• Presentations and speaker biographies are available on the conference page: here
• Conference programme: here ( 258KB)
• Conference videos can be viewed: here

The workshop "Personalised Medicine - Opportunities and Challenges for European Healthcare" explored the opportunities and challenges personalised medicine brings, with a particular focus on the bottlenecks that need to be overcome for the rapid uptake of personalised medicine into clinical practice. The workshop conclusions stressed the importance of involving patients, health care practitioners and pathologists early in the development process.
Read more in this Summary Report ( 115KB)

The workshop "Stratification Biomarkers in Personalised Medicine" aimed to explore issues associated with stratification biomarkers in the emerging field of personalised medicine. The main results of the workshop were to identify obstacles associated to biomarker discovery and to their use in clinical trials and medical practice, to contribute to building a vision for 2020 and to clarify the role of EU-funded research for progressing this rapidly emerging area of research.
Read more in this Summary Report ( 149KB)

The aim of the workshop "-Omics in Personalised Medicine" was to explore the role of the "-omics technologies" in the development of the emerging field of personalised medicine. The workshop identified visions and key priorities for the application of -omics in personalised medicine and the potential role of EU funded research.
Its main conclusions can be found in the Summary Report ( 155KB)

The "4D Biology Workshop for Health and Disease" aimed at finding the best organising principles for large-scale proteomics, interactomics and structural genomics/biology initiatives, and setting the vision for future high-throughput research and large-scale data gathering in biological and medical science.

Read more in the workshop summary report published in the
New Biotechnology Journal, Volume 28, Issue 4, July 2011, pages 291-293, by the authors: J.P. Abrahams, R. Apweiler, R. Balling, M.G. Bertero, J.M. Bujnicki, N.E. Chayen, P. Chene, G.L. Corthals, T. Dylag, F. Forster, A.J. Heck, P.J. Henderson, R. Herwig, P. Jehenson, S.J. Kokalj, E. Laue, P. Legrain, L. Martens, C. Migliorini, A. Musacchio, M. Podobnik, G.F. Schertler, G. Schreiber, T.K. Sixma, A.B. Smit, D. Stuart, D.I. Svergun, M.J. Taussig (Copyright Elsevier 2010). Please note that for reproduction and any other use of this article, permission must be sought directly from the copyright holder (Elsevier).