Innovative Medicines Initiative approves € 40 million project for better careof patients with Hematologic malignancies.

WP7

Brussels/Salamanca, 9 January 2017 - The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) has approved HARMONY, a project that aims to foster better access and care for patients with various hematologic malignancies (HM) with the use of big data. The project is made up of 51 partners from 11 European countries, including 7 pharmaceutical companies.

HARMONY will capture, integrate, analyze and harmonize anonymous patient data from high-quality multidisciplinary sources to unlock valuable knowledge on multiple myeloma (MM), acute myeloid leukemia (AML), acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), non-Hodgkins lymphoma (NHL), myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) and pediatric HMs.

Building on pre-existing, long-lasting collaborations between Academic institutes and the pharmaceutical industry, the HARMONY project shall further advance HM management through a more efficient process of treatment development and rapid decision-making. The expected outcome will be better prognosis and quicker life-saving decisions, important for patients suffering from these hematological diseases.

The project brings together key stakeholders in the clinical, academic, patient, HTA (health technology assessment), regulatory, economical, ethical and pharmaceutical fields to:

Developing a data sharing platform that empowers clinicians and policy stakeholders to improve decision-making
Establishing a network reflecting the European HMs landscape
Defining clinical endpoints and standard outcomes in ALL (paediatric & adult), NHL, MM, AML, CLL, MDS
Alignment of key stakeholders on relevance of these outcomes (policy makers, payers, patients)
Providing means for analysing complex data sets comprising different layers of information
Identifying specific markers for early registration of innovative and effective therapies for HMs

The HARMONY project's final deliverable is a big data platform which integrates outcome measures and endpoint definitions for HMs. HARMONY will achieve this from a pan-European perspective by uniting and aligning European stakeholders and key opinion leaders in the field. The 5-year project will start in January 2017 and is 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. Harmony is coordinated by two public leads: Prof. Dr. Jesús Marïa Hernández from Instituto de Investigación Biomédica de Salamanca, Spain, and Dr. Guillermo Sanz from Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria del Hospital La Fe de Valencia, Spain, and by two EFPIA leads, Tayyab Salimullah from Novartis Oncology and Pam Bacon from Celgene International.

Download the press release in PDF

More information: www.harmony-alliance.eu
Contact: HARMONY Communications Office: Ellen de Waal, Communication Manager, +31654711703, communications@harmony-alliance.eu

The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) is Europe's largest public-private initiative aiming to speed up the development of better and safer medicines for patients. IMI supports collaborative research projects and builds networks of industrial and academic experts in order to boost pharmaceutical innovation in Europe. IMI is a joint undertaking between the European Union and the pharmaceutical industry association EFPIA.

HARMONY has received funding from IMI 2 Joint Undertaking and is listed under grant agreement No. 116026. 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). IMI supports collaborative research projects and builds networks of industrial and academic experts in order to boost pharmaceutical innovation in Europe.

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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).