The European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology (EULAR) is proud to announce the launch of RheumaFacts, an innovative and unique resource of facts and figures related to rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases (RMDs) across Europe. Strategically developed to support EULAR's mission of reducing the impact of RMDs on individuals and society, RheumaFacts will serve as a powerful tool to provide healthcare professionals, researchers, policymakers, and patients with data-driven insights on the status of rheumatologic care across EULAR's member countries.
Through periodical surveys among EULAR's member organizations, country-specific information about national rheumatologic care, resources and expenditures will be retrieved. Complemented by global, socio-economic statistics from international organizations, RheumaFacts will provide, in one single platform, a unique resource about the reality of the impact of RMDs across Europe. "By joining forces with all of EULAR's member countries, we will create a database of up-to-date RMD-related information. No other data repository of this kind is available across Europe, and it will be the go-to resource to understand the real burden of disease and identify unmet needs in the different healthcare systems across Europe", said Dr Anna Molto, chair of the EULAR Research sub-committee of epidemiology and public health and lead of the project.
RheumaFacts is one of several new initiatives under the umbrella of the EULAR Research Centre that aims to facilitate collaborative basic, clinical, and epidemiological research by providing resources, infrastructure, services, and training for RMD researchers across Europe. The Centre's recently launched, patient-filled Impact of RMDs Survey will be another important resource informing RheumaFacts with a unique patients' perspective on rheumatologic care.
RheumaFacts will reveal not only trends and numbers, but much more importantly, healthcare gaps and inequalities among our member societies that we will aim to reduce. With RheumaFacts, we will enable patient organizations and policymakers to be better informed and to advocate more effectively for decent care of RMD patients across the EULAR countries."
Professor Annamaria Iagnocco, EULAR President
The data presented in RheumaFacts will be available to researchers and other groups such as funding agencies, decision-makers, and policymakers who can advance public health at a European level. EULAR encourages all its member organizations to participate in the data collection by sharing relevant information and insights about their national RMD care.
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