Horizon 2020 defined Personalised Medicine as "a medical model using characterization of individuals’ phenotypes and genotypes (e.g. molecular profiling, medical imaging, lifestyle data) for tailoring the right therapeutic strategy for the right person at the right time, and/or to determine the predisposition to disease and/or to deliver timely and targeted prevention". Personalised Medicine (PM) represents a paradigm shift away from a ‘one size fits all’ approach to the treatment and care of patients with a particular condition, to one which uses emergent approaches in areas such as diagnostic tests, functional genomic technologies, molecular pathways, data analytics and real time monitoring of conditions to better manage patients’ health and to target therapies to achieve the best outcomes in the management of a patient’s disease or predisposition to disease. At the same time, one key objective of personalised medicine is to make health systems more sustainable by reducing costs.
The European Research Area Network (ERA-NET) focusing on personalised medicine (ERA PerMed) was created in December 2017 under Horizon 2020 and has been supported by 32 funding institutions from 23 countries (19 EU countries, 3 H2020 associated countries and 1 third country) and 6 regions. ERA PerMed, has been the biggest ERA-Net in the health sector, and has fostered the development of personalised approaches, in which the citizen is at the centre of healthcare. ERA PerMed has brought an exceptional scenario of major European funding institutions that shares a common aim and strong commitment to facilitate and accelerate the effective translation of scientific discoveries into clinical applications and benefits for health systems, driving significantly the further development and implementation of PM, and increasing the quality of PM research.
In this regard, major efforts has been directed towards creating the conditions for coordinating and aligning relevant stakeholders (public institutions, governments, industry, civil society, patient organisations) in personalised medicine action across Europe and beyond.
ERA PerMed has coordinated R&I efforts of the participating partners (funding agencies from EU, associate countries to H2020 and third countries). ERA PerMed partners have implemented one call with top-up co-funding from the EC (JTC2018), including funded project monitoring. Additionally, four non-cofunded calls has been launched, in order to broaden the scope of action of the efforts made by the EC and funding organizations to foster the Personalised Medicine Research Community and to be able to take into account recent changes within the landscape of personalised medicine, e.g. new developments of emerging technologies and societal challenges, which reinforces and amplifies the expected impact of ERA PerMed funding activity.
