Programme of the Conference (PDF)

Five plenary sessions will focus on the five perspectives of the Vision Paper: citizen engagement, involvement of health professionals, implementation within healthcare systems, health-related information, and the development of sustainable economic models covering the entire spectrum of personalised medicine.

Each session will include two talks and a panel discussion to widen the session’s perspective with other expertises.

1^st DAY

Welcome & Opening Statements

SESSION 1: Informed and engaged citizens - personalised medicine for the individual and society

Through this session, it will be discuss how and when to include patient perspectives in the development life cycle of personalised medicals, prevention, products and interventions. The session will show the opportunities, benefits and barriers of patient empowerment in healthcare, research activities or policy development. The session will show the importance of the patient’s role to provide an overarching perspective and first-hand experience on what it is like to live with a disease, and by doing that, ensuring that interventions truly respond to patient needs and priorities. Conversely, due to the complexity of PM, it is challenging to engage patients and citizens. A focus will be made on the data integration and management as well as on education and training that are required to allow patients and patient organisations to contribute to research and to disseminate health-related information through their communities.

SESSION 2: Enhancing life science- and health-related data through biomedical research, data harmonisation and regulatory frameworks

Data and data analytics are basic pillars of PM. Handling and interoperating large heterogeneous data sets represent a conceptual and technical challenge, including issues of data protection and security, infrastructure and computational resources, as well as the need of making data and data interpretation accessible to a diversity of end-users from patients and scientist to medical doctors. Data infrastructure and technical solutions will be presented on how to allow access to biomedical and medical data and how to achieve the integration of data sources of disparate nature.

SESSION 3: Enabling healthcare systems to implement the next generation of medicine: a crucial shift

The implementation of PM is a paradigm shift for our current healthcare systems and will require a switch from a system focusing on treating diseases to a system ensuring that appropriate preventive measures are set in place, that early diagnosis is made or optimal therapies are selected. This session will provide an insight from a public health expert view on the design, implementation and evaluation of healthcare system reforms and on how to facilitate and guarantee an equitable access to personalised healthcare for all citizens. The session will furthermore demonstrate how genomics and technologies are changing the practice of medicine and public health improving health population and disease prevention.

2^nd DAY

SESSION 4: Building an efficient entrepreneurial ecosystem supporting health innovation

This session will focus on the importance to bridge the gap between research and innovation based on a better cooperation between academia and industry. Solutions will be presented on how the transfer of clinical and biomedical research to routine healthcare can be facilitated and organised through an ecosystem supporting partnerships and collaborations. Additionally, the session will show how medical education will improve collaboration and research through mutual understanding and allow a better and more complete flow of information in translating biomedical discoveries into clinical practices.

SESSION 5: Personalised medicine, an opportunity to redefine value in healthcare by incorporating patient preference and socio-economics aspects

Healthcare systems face rising costs due to technological developments, increasing number of patients with chronic diseases and expensive PM treatments. Additionally, healthcare systems should be based on solidarity and guarantee an equitable access to care. The session will show novel approaches to value assessment beyond conventional cost-effectiveness analysis and centred on patient preferences. As the notion of value still differs between citizens, patients, healthcare providers, health professional, industry but also healthcare systems, it is necessary to define a comprehensive meaning of value. The session will welcome health economists and national authorities to provide insight on how PM will be valued in future healthcare systems on emerging issues as access, costs, prices and reimbursement.

Further information about the programme:

In addition to the above mentioned programme, ICPerMed will feature and honour in a dedicated session best practices in personalised medicine research through the ICPerMed Recognition 2020, that aims to recognise, encourage, promote and disseminate outstanding examples.