EAPM is the abbreviation for 'European Alliance for Personalised Medicine' and aims to improve patient care by accelerating the development, delivery and uptake of personalised medicine and earlier diagnostics, through consensus. The theme of the EAPM Bridging Presidency conference this year - organized during the auspices of the Slovenia Presidency of the EU - was: Innovation, Public Trust and Evidence: Generating Alignment to facilitate personalized Innovation in Healthcare. High-level speakers and attendees were from a wide range of stakeholder groups including patients, healthcare professionals, academics, industry representatives, politicians and legislators, the media and more.
Professor Lars Bullinger of Charité Berlin represented the HARMONY Alliance at the EAPM Presidency Conference in Session 4: Securing patient Access to Advanced Molecular Diagnostics.
HARMONY Partner Denis Horgan, Executive Director EAPM: “Session 4 is designed to engage with all relevant stakeholders in the arena of hematology and, obviously, the 2nd Bridging Presidency is the ideal place to do this. Blood disorders, malignant or non-malignant hematological disorders, are not only a burden for patients, but also for society as a whole. We need to urgently step up how Europe tackles this. Policy is important and, by the time of the meeting, the new Presidency of the EU will be ready to start work, Fortunately, many member states and European Politicians are knowledgeable and active in the fields of cancer, translational research and access. Engaging with such Parliamentarians and Member States, such as those championing the treatment of childhood cancers, is something that we need to do down the line, and as highlighted in the HARMONY Policy Paper".
Illustrating the healthcare cost in Europe: Economic burden of malignant blood disorders across Europe: a population-based cost analysis: Malignant blood disorders cost the 31 European countries €12 billion in 2012. Healthcare cost €7·3 billion (62% of total costs), productivity losses cost €3·6 billion (30%), and informal care cost €1 billion (8%). For the EU countries, malignant blood disorders cost €6·8 billion (12%) of the total healthcare expenditure on cancer (€57 billion), with this proportion being second only to breast cancer. In terms of total cancer costs in the EU (€143 billion), malignant blood disorders cost €12 billion (8%)(Source: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27476787/).
Illustrating incidence vs prevalence of blood cancers in the world, per continent: Prevalence refers to proportion of persons who have a condition during a particular time period, whereas incidence refers to the proportion or rate of persons who develop a condition during a particular time period. This graphic presents an estimated number over a period of 1 year including all ages: 2020 (Source: Globocan 2020, link to PDF).
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#BigDataforbloodcancer | Big Data accelerate better and faster treatment for Blood Cancer Patients
The HARMONY Alliance is a European Public–Private Partnership for Big Data in Hematology that is capturing and mining Big Data on Hematologic Malignancies. Both projects of the HARMONY Alliance, HARMONY and HARMONY PLUS, are funded by the Innovatie Medicines Initiative (IMI). HARMONY unites more than 100 organizations from 18 European countries, such as medical associations, hospitals, research institutes, patient organizations, pharmaceutical and IT companies.
HARMONY uses Big Data analytics to accelerate the development of more effective treatments for blood cancer patients. Data are stored in HARMONY’s Big Data Platform, which has already identified over 80,000 anonymized patient records, making it one of the largest databases of its kind. Leading research teams are currently using this wealth of information to answer critical questions about Blood Cancers / Hematologic Malignancies that cannot be addressed with other methods. This is the added value HARMONY will bring to precision medicine for patients.
More about the HARMONY Alliance: watch our video >
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Public-private partnership for Big Data in Hematology
HARMONY and HARMONY PLUS are funded through the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), Europe's largest public-private initiative aiming to speed up the development of better and safer medicines for patients. Funding is received from the IMI 2 Joint Undertaking and is listed under grant agreement for HARMONY No. 116026 and grant agreement for HARMONY PLUS No. 945406. This Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA).
HARMONY Coordination Office
Institute of Biomedical Research of
Salamanca (IBSAL)
Salamanca, Spain
HARMONY Communications
European Hematology Association (EHA)
The Hague, The Netherlands
