Quotes - HARMONY Alliance

Jesús María Hernández Rivas

HARMONY Coordinator, Research group in Molecular Cytogenetics, IBSAL

"HARMONY is a Network of Excellence in Hematology that goes beyond scientific collaboration to integrate the efforts of all Healthcare System Stakeholders. Ultimately, HARMONY aims to facilitate the access to the right treatment for the right patient at the right time."

Guillermo Sanz

HARMONY Co-Chair, Fundación para la Investigación del Hospital Universitario La Fe de la Comunidad Valenciana.

"HARMONY Alliance is the largest European public-private partnership initiative aiming to improve the outcomes of patients with hematological malignancies through the use of big data sharing among all relevant stakeholders involved."

Frederico Calado

HARMONY Lead, Novartis

“HARMONY is boldly addressing the collective action problem related to the use of health data for research and care provision - in one single go. Public and private partners have really come together to share, integrate and analyse clinical, genomic and real-world data to improve the health outcomes of cancer patients and address the challenges that cancer care faces.”

Yann Guillevic

Medical Affairs Operations Lead, Celgene

“HARMONY is one of the major initiatives in Europe focused on patient unmet need in Haematology. It is a critical collaborative effort between public and private stakeholders using the most advanced Big Data platform. HARMONY will contribute to innovation for patients, through this major collaboration in Europe, with clinicians, patients, cooperative group, regulatory authorities, HTA bodies and the pharmaceutical industry.”

Sofia Iqbal

Real World Evidence Partnerships Lead, EMEA, Janssen Health Economics, Market Access and Reimbursement

"Big Data and Advanced Analytics provide an opportunity to look for dynamic patterns and predict accurate and timely diagnosis in rare diseases such as Hematology. Big Data in Hematology will ideally allow a more refined phenotyping that eventually prolong and improve the patients´ live"

Jan Geissler

Founder and CEO, LeukaNET

"HARMONY helps improve the prognosis and outcome of patients with hematological cancers, driven by knowledge derived from the combination and analysis of complex data. This will only make a difference to real patients if the evidence, findings and outcomes of the project are meaningful and relevant to patients, next to other stakeholders. Through its Stakeholder Forum, HARMONY will collect input from patient organisations and all other stakeholders to discuss needs, gaps, opportunities and barriers, informing the implementation of the project across work packages."

Alun Passey

Real World Evidence Research Associate, JPNV-JANSSEN

"The over-arching goal of the HARMONY Alliance is to integrate patient data from molecular omics, treatment pathways and social and economic impacts to generate novel algorithmic approaches which will transform patient treatment and outcomes."

Simona Scartoni

Head of Biostatistics and Data Management, Menarini Ricerche

"The challenge of WP5 is to provide methodologies to analyze data, integrating clinical and non-clinical information, to build a predictive tool in a personalized medicine framework."

Gastone Castellani

Professor Department of Physics and Astronomy Academic discipline. Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna

"WP5 aims to develop methodologies for statistical analysis and modelling of both molecular and clinical data coming from patients with hematological malignancies, identifying possible specific disease markers and providing analytical tools deployed on the Harmony data platform."

Rubén Villoria Medina

Project Coordinator, GMV Soluciones Globales Internet (GMV)

"The Big Data platform, to be developed in WP3, will support data homogenization on a common data model to create relationships and allow advance analysis and studies between treatments, health economics, clinical, molecular, demographic data, etc. The BIG Data infrastructure is developed in such a way that it is capable to incorporate multiple types of heterogeneous data sources in a secured Data Lake infrastructure, normalizing data and incorporating techniques of data quality assessment."

Michel van Speybroeck

Director Data Sciences, JPNV-JANSSEN

"Public and private partners are bringing together their best people, data, and knowledge to solve key questions on hematological cancers. These challenges can only be met by applying the most advanced technology."

Lars Bullinger

Professor in Personalized Medicine, Charité

"Hematological malignancies (HMs) are a role model for the treatment of many cancers. Being characterized by a tremendous heterogeneity, HMs are hard to come by with “one size fits all” treatment strategies and today many open questions remain concerning their management. To capture the complexity of the disease, individual working groups and all stakeholders involved in the treatment of HMs, are joining efforts. WP2 will define important questions, co-ordinate respective projects with a focus on the appropriate selection of outcome measures. These measures should become applicable as standard outcome sets with the ultimate goal to improve HM management and patient centered treatment approaches."

Renate Schulze-Rath

Director, Oncology1/WHC, Bayer

"Looking forward to working together with so many public and private partners on defining outcomes sets for HMs which include both clinical outcome measures and patient factors for patients and caregivers.The shared goal is to establish a system to improve rapid decision-making in the interests of better therapy access and care for patients with HMs."

Anthony Moorman

Newcastle University, HARMONY Key Opinion Leaders for Childhood Leukemia

"Sharing data is crucial to further research in Hematological Malignancies because many of these cancers are heterogeneous in terms of their genetic profile. Many genetic profiles are rare; many account for <10% cases. To ascertain the prognostic or predictive value of genetic biomarkers, researchers need to study large cohorts of patients. This is only achievable by sharing data."

Ellen de Waal

HARMONY Communication Manager, European Hematology Association

"We will make a difference by communicating about real developments and achievements which are realized by the teams of the HARMONY Work Packages, HM Disease Groups and Research Projects. Through 80+ community members we are the interface between all stakeholders. Never has a European public-private initiative had such ambitious goals for international collaboration in big data and HMs. We aim to find the right people to connect and provide the right information to catch their interest en get engaged."

John E. Butler

Ransohoff, VP, Global External Innovation, Bayer

"The HARMONY consortium is committed to enabling the use of high-quality clinical and genomic data for the benefit of patients with Hematological Malignancies. Our consortium provides a solid and proven framework that meets the requirements of GDPR and national regulations for the secondary use of clinical data."

Pam Bacon

HARMONY Co-Lead, Celgene

"HARMONY will to allow us to understand the outcomes that matter to patients and through the big data platform, identify targets, risk factors or treatments which will accelerate access of treatments to patients. The collaborative nature of HARMONY, with clinicians, cooperative groups, patients, regulatory authorities, HTA bodies and the pharmaceutical industry, an important way forward to ensure we can jointly achieve these challenging objectives and ensure faster access to innovation for patients with significant unmet needs in hematology."