On June 27th we were 400 participants to celebrate an outstanding achievement on medical research. In the last ten years, the Innovative Medicine Initiative has done more than 100 European projects and almost 7,000 tangible results in health research and innovation. IMI is a public-private partnership between the European Commission and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (or EFPIA) that has pooled out over 5 billion euros of funding for health research.
In the celebration event, speakers highlighted the IMI accomplishment of bringing together people from different backgrounds - from patients, to industries, passing by universities, small and medium-sized enterprises, patients, and regulators - to tackle major research and healthcare challenges.
IMI is pioneer in involving patients in research projects: 75% of IMI projects have seen a participation of the patients, who were advising on agenda settings and research priorities, study design, communication activities and ethics.
One concrete best example of patient involvement is the U-BIOPRED project, which aimed to identify different types of asthma and ensure better diagnosis and treatment for each patient and in which EF partnered. Scott Wagers, from BioSci Consulting who participated in the project, and Val Hudson a patient representative within U-BIOPRED, told the audience how the Patient Input Platform integrated in the project consortium managed to provide meaningful feedback to the research activities, thanks to their involvement in all consortium meetings and in the production of documentation addressed to a public of patients.
We would be thrilled to repeat the great achievements of U-BIOPRED in future IMI projects on having allergy, asthma and COPD, as these are diseases in which world evidence data and personalised medicine have a great potential for future care and prevention.
As the European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation Carlos Moedas said “IMI is the biggest public-private partnership for health in the world. If you want that success to continue: Keep collaborating. Keep climbing up to that balcony and focusing on the long term, collective vision.”
Promising news for the future of patients’ centred projects!
You can visit IMI website and find more information about our role in U-BIOPRED here.