On 12 June, the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) held its annual Stakeholder Forum in Brussels under the theme “Brain health and disease in the digital era - 2020 & beyond’”. The event gathered more than 400 delegates including policy makers, academics, pharmaceutical industry, patient representatives, regulators, SMEs and research-funding organisations to discuss how to develop game-changing initiatives in the brain area.
Wolfgang Burtscher (Deputy Director-General, DG Research and Innovation, European Commission) and Dhaval Patel (Executive Vice President, Chief Scientific Officer, UCB) opened the event and highlighted the importance of public and private partnership across sectors for tackling brain disorders. They drew the attention to the fact that IMI has been engaged in these important discussions and contributions for a decade. Pierre Meulien (Executive Director, IMI) then introduced the next IMI Calls for proposals, IMI2 Calls 18 and 19. Luca Pani (Professor of Psychiatry, University of Miami and Professor of Pharmacology, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia) set the scene with his presentation. He underlined the availability of health data (quantitative and qualitative), digital products used as biomarkers, and artificial intelligence.
The morning was then dedicated to healthy lifestyles, prevention and diagnosis. Miia Kivipelto (Professor of Clinical Geriatric Epidemiology, Department of Neurobiology, Karolinska Institutet) underlined the importance of the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease. Discussions were held on how different stakeholders are engaging with digital health technologies and they are demonstrating reliability and performance of these technologies while assuring compliance with legal, regulatory and ethical requirements. Speakers also explored the potential of digital technologies to facilitate timely and accurate diagnosis. There was also an interesting discussion on benchmarking technologies.
The afternoon session concentrated on treatment and care, discussing questions such as how digital technologies can enhance the development and delivery of pharmacological interventions or issues like usability, usefulness and acceptance of these technologies by patients and their carers. Hilary Doxford (dementia advocate) and her husband and supporter Peter Paniccia were part of the panelists. Hillary is a former member of the European Working Group of People with Dementia (EWGPWD) – group launched by Alzheimer Europe and its member associations in 2012. She stated that anything that can be done to help patients and their carers would be appreciated. She also underlined the importance of engaging patients straight from the beginning.
The Stakeholder Forum ended with a high level panel discussion. Several key stakeholders were invited to discuss main points and questions raised in earlier sessions. Alzheimer Europe Executive Director Jean Georges (pictured) was part of the panel and highlighted some achievements from IMI research projects such as EPAD, AMYPAD, ROADMAP and AETIONOMY, in which Alzheimer Europe is involved. He also stressed the importance of breaking down silos between and within projects. Project Officer Cindy Birck also attended the meeting.
https://www.imi.europa.eu/news-events/events/imi-stakeholder-forum-2019
