The ICPerMed Executive Committee elected Mairead O’Driscoll of the Health Research Board (HRB, Ireland) as chair. As vice chairs Ain Aaviksoo from the Ministry of Social Affairs (Estonia) and Wolfgang Ballensiefen from DLR³ (Germany) were elected. The three chairs took over the management of ICPerMed from chair ad interim Irene Nordstedt, Head of the Innovative and Personalised Medicine Unit of DG RTD (EC).
The newly elected chair Mairead O’Driscoll says: “Personalised medicine puts citizens at the centre of healthcare. To achieve its full potential, we have to take a coordinated approach to research across member states. I am looking forward to working with all the members of ICPerMed to advance personalised medicine research in Europe and to demonstrate the benefits to citizens and healthcare systems.”
The chairs and the consortium will be supported by the ICPerMed Secretariat. The secretariat started its work as of November 2016 and will be organising workshops and conferences. It is coordinated by DLR³, Germany with partners from France, Italy and Spain. The secretariat’s work is financed by the EC over the next four years.
ICPerMed members have collaborated earlier, e.g. organising an international conference on Personalised Medicine in Brussels in June 2016.
For inquiries, please contact the ICPerMed Secretariat:
E-mail: ICPerMed@dlr.de
Phone: +49 228 3821-1266
The DLR Project Management Agency specialises in services for the funding of research, innovation and education. As one of Germany’s largest project management agencies, it supports German state and federal ministries in implementing research funding programmes and operates on behalf of the European Commission, foundations and associations.
¹ According to the European Council Conclusions on personalised medicine for patients (2015/C 421/03)5, personalised medicine “ […] refers to 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“.
² The Health Directorate of Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, European Commission.
³ Project Management Agency, Department of Health, of the German Aerospace Center, DLR.