To get an overview of the implementation level of personalised medicine in regions with different innovation capacities and different adaption levels, a series of site visits to central regional stakeholders was done. This information round was supported by online surveys, which were distributed to the regional representation offices in Brussels, to central regional stakeholders and through the JRC website of the Smart Specialisation Partnership for Personalised Medicine (S3P4PM).
Next to this, SAPHIRe organised dedicated workshops and - since the COVID pandemics- a series of webinars, to address specific issues, barriers and needs to advance.
The mapping exercise and outcomes of the workshops and webinars served to build the SAPHIRe Observatory as a dynamic online tool for regional policymakers, funders and other key stakeholders to share relevant information on policies, best practices, implementation of personalised medicine, projects and innovation activities related to personalised medicine. This allows users to search for a region and provides an overview of regional activities in personalised medicine and to find partners for potential collaboration and exchange of information.
The findings of the workshops and webinars were summarised in a number of reports, which are available on the SAPHIRe website. The insights were feeding into a modular roadmap for regions to provide guidance and inspiration for European regions and their policy makers that want to invest in research and innovation (R&I) for personalised medicine and capitalise on the implementation in their region. The roadmap is the outcome and extraction of the work done during the SAPHIRe workshops, webinars and round table events. It is also based on input from the regions through the surveys and desktop research. The work of SAPHIRe clearly demonstrated how diverse regions are. The authority levels for R&I and health are differently distributed and no country in Europe is organised in the same manner. Therefore, the roadmap is presented as a modular package to serve the different needs of different regions, adapted to their specific needs, ambitions and capacities. The roadmap contains a flowchart, different best practices and recommendations for regions and regional stakeholders involved in personalised medicine.
SAPHIRe also tries to activate collaborations between regions. This was done through dedicated actions that bring regional stakeholders together to identify common interests and complementary assets. Next to the round table events of EIT Health Innostars, the Smart Specialisation Partnership on Personalised Medicine (S3P4PM) and the follow-up initiative - the Vanguard Initiative Pilot Smart Health - is one of the initiatives that is supporting the activation of regions. Through these actions SAPHIRe wanted to establish novel innovative collaborations between regional stakeholders.
All information about the progress made by the SAPHIRe consortium can be found in the SAPHIRe newsletter, our website, linkedIn and our Twitter account. Updates were also given to ICPerMed to be included in the ICPerMed newsletter.