ITFoM FET Flagship pilot project to be presented at European Parliament seminar

Sep 8 2011

On 20 September 2011, the Information Technology: Future of Medicine (ITFoM) FET Flagship pilot project will be presented at a seminar in the European Parliament. The aim of the meeting will be to present the project to European decision makers and ensure ITFoM is a part of the future health R&D agenda of the EU in 2012 and beyond, including the Commission's proposal for "Horizon 2020" which will be presented in November 2011. The seminar will be followed by a dinner debate on the challenges faced by ITFoM in becoming an established part of health research capacity in the EU. Issues to be addressed include the important role of research infrastructures, international cooperation and precompetitive collaborations, amongst others.

The aim of ITFoM is to create a "virtual patient" by developing general models of human pathways, tissues, and ultimately of the whole human. This will enable physicians to identify personalised prevention schedules, therapies and potential effects on individual patients. Through application in the clinic, this "virtual patient" will revolutionise medicine. The potential benefits are enormous in terms of reduction of healthcare costs as well as for each individual patient: identification of efficient drug combinations on an individual basis; substantial advances in disease prevention and treatment; better data access and use for health professionals, healthcare systems, and researchers.

ITFoM proposes medicine based on molecular, physiological, anatomical and environmental data from individual patients. This individualised and data-rich medicine poses unprecedented challenges for Information and Communications Technology in terms of hardware, storage and communication. The project brings together partners and associated members from the whole of Europe and beyond, including world leading academic institutes and multinational companies such as IBM, Intel, XEROX, Roche, Illumina, Life Technologies and Agilent.