EU ministers approve detailed policy plan to promote personalised medicines
The plan tells the European Commission and other organisations to investigate using Big Data to make these pharmaceuticals work better
A detailed policy plan has been approved by the European Union (EU) Council of Ministers that aims to promote the use of personalised medicines across the EU. Notably, the plan tells the European Commission and other organisations to investigate using Big Data to make these pharmaceuticals work better.
A key element of these formal ‘council conclusions’ is for the development by the EU’s 28 member states of common principles on data collection for this purpose, so that information can be shared effectively. This work should, it said, be based on 'standards and a sound legal framework and enabling the processing of patient data and the availability of comparable data at European Union level…'. This would allow the 'secondary use and analysis of data on a larger scale in compliance with data protection legislation…'.
To this end, ministers agreed to promote the interoperability of their countries’ electronic health records 'to facilitate their use for public health and research', through discussion within the EU eHealth Network, a liaison group of EU member states that has operated since 2012.
Ministers said this work should make use of services and finances offered by the Connecting Europe Facility, which has a budget of €1.14bn for telecommunications projects uniting EU communications networks.
The ministers’ policy statement also ordered that researchers examine how to 'realise the potential of Big Data, which is used in personalised medicine, in contributing to innovative, efficient and sustainable health systems, respecting the right to protection of personal data', with such studies also considering ethical, legal and social issues. This work would be carried out under the EU’s Third Health Programme (2014–2020), which can call on a spending budget of €449.4m.
The policy statement said that EU ‘European Reference Networks’ of experts on rare medical conditions should promote cross-sectoral research, 'including, where appropriate, into personalised medicine for patients suffering from rare or low-prevalence diseases or complex diseases'.
Other research projects would be encouraged and funded through the EU’s €80bn Horizon 2020 research programme and the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), 'to speed up the development of more effective preventive and diagnostic tools, as well as better and safer medicines for patients'.
