Following the Stakeholder Workshop held last September at the European Parliament (report available at EFA website), EFA brought together relevant European asthma experts for a crucial meeting which was organized within the framework of the EARIP project.
The expert workshop was held on the 21st of October at the Asthma UK head office in London and attended by nineteen key personalities in the field of asthma. Participants included representatives from healthcare professionals, academia, industries and patients. The workshop is the final step in a pathway initiated by EFA in EARIP with the publication of the literature review “National and regional asthma programmes in Europe” and followed by the Stakeholder Workshop. The results of these two actions represented the basis for the discussion in the expert workshop, where participants were called to develop recommendations and gaps for healthcare system change and related research in asthma.
Participants in the workshop were divided into two groups: one dealing with the identification of gaps in research and the second tasked with exploration of recommendation for the improvement of healthcare systems.
Inputs provided by participants in each of the two groups were then classified into clusters. Regarding recommendations and gaps in research, 7 clusters were identified:
- diagnosis,
- self-management,
- e- and m-Health,
- phenotyping,
- education,
- primary care,
- efficient use of resources.
With respect to boosting change in the healthcare systems the following clusters were highlighted by the group:
- prevention,
- minimum standards across Europe,
- measurement of performances,
- structural changes,
- personalized medicine
- education.
Following on from this all participants engaged in a prioritization exercise, in order to identify the actions that need to be taken in order to develop better and more efficient health and care systems.
The results of the workshop will feed into a report which will represent one of the primary results of the EARIP workshop.
This report will be soon available on EFA’s website.