Functional Disorders (FD) are clusters of chronic somatic symptoms that currently cannot be associated to reproducibly observable pathophysiological mechanisms. A Dutch study showed FD to be the second most expensive health care problem, after dementia, responsible for 4.4% of the total health care costs. Thereby clearly showing that FD clearly contribute to the main healthcare challenge Europe is facing: the rising and potentially unsustainable health and care costs. FD occur frequently: in many medical specialties, FD outnumber the chronic physical diseases. However, etiological concepts are still unresolved and differ between medical specialties having important consequences for patients. Given the high prevalence and associated burden, a shared understanding and better conceptualization of FD is urgently needed in order to optimize clinical management.
These challenges result in a lack of knowledge on FD, leading to fragmented and insufficient health care for patients with FD, and a society in which patients with FD experience stigma from both the society as well as from health care professionals. There is an urgent need to solve the fragmented and insufficient education and research landscape. For this reason EURONET-SOMA has envisioned ETUDE: a sustainable and structure training programme that educates a new generation of interdisciplinary creative early stage researchers (ESR) that are able to cross disciplines and to translate theory and experimental models to products and services that improve care for patients.
Through intense collaboration, our network aims to achieve substantial breakthroughs in the field of FD, with the following targets:
• Scientific target: to develop knowledge on mechanisms underlying FD to come to new diagnostic methods, more effective patient-centred treatments, and reduced stigma and burden associated with FD;
• Training target: to train 15 fellows in multidisciplinary skills and in the translation from theoretical insights to practical products and services;
• Industry involvement target: to strengthen the collaboration between academic and non-academic partners, and to allow the industrial beneficiaries to incorporate the newest scientific insights into their products to improve diagnosis or treatment of FD.
ETUDE unites the efforts of an interdisciplinary and dynamic network of different European research groups in close collaboration with relevant industrial and other non-academic partners. We have teamed up a consortium of 15 non-academic partners and 15 partners for academia. Together, we will tackle the above mentioned challenges associated with FD with a total of 15 ESRs. The fellows will receive a comprehensive interdisciplinary gold standard training through local measures, and network-wide activities on various topics. Each ESR will do at least one secondment to another academic partner and one secondment to a non-academic partner. This ensures that all fellows can develop vital expertise to work inside and outside academia.
