Oct 12 2010
On the 26 October 2010 the European Parliament's STOA (Science and Technology Options Assessment) Panel will hold a hearing entitled "Health-Related Research Infrastructures and their Contribution to the EU's Grand Challenges".
Dr. Paul Rübig MEP, Chairman of STOA and member of the ITRE Committee will sponsor the Hearing: the keynote address will be by Mr. Benoît Cerexhe, Minister of Research for Belgium, President of the Competitiveness Council.
The Hearing will examine how the EU's Biological and Medical Science Research Infrastructures will contribute to key health-related European strategic policy priorities, including:
- Health challenges in an ageing population
- Measures to improve health care and health inequality in eastern European countries
- International standards for sampling pre-analytics for biomarkers
- Sustainable access to biological resources
- Infrastructure for rapid evidence-based decision making for new epidemics
- Preventive measures against bioterrorism
- New models for public-private partnerships.
- The impact of genomic research on personalized medicine
In addition to the above, the hearing will look at models for industry-academia pre-competitive collaboration; leadership from Pfizer, INSERM, Wellcome and Merieux will be present along with MEPs and EU Commission Officials amongst others.
The Hearing will include a general presentation concerning all the EU's health-related research infrastructures, followed by three specific examples, namely Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources Research Infrastructure (BBMRI), the European Clinical Research Infrastructures Network (ECRIN), and the European Research Infrastructure on Highly Pathogenic Agents (ERINHA). Due to the global dimension of most of these issues, high level policy support is needed in order to increase Europe's competitiveness in an internationally coordinated manner.
Source:
Science and Technology Options Assessment Panel
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