Europe has 30 million people with asthma, whose treatment costs about €20 bn annually. Productivity lost through poor asthma control in Europe is estimated to be €9.8 bn per year. By 2020 approximately 120,000 people in Europe will die from asthma attacks, and 4 million hospitalisations will be needed for the most severely affected.
The Objectives of EARIP (European Asthma Research and Innovation Partnership) include to:
• reduce the annual level of deaths by 25% within 10 years and 50% within 20 years, and hospitalisations by 50%
• identify more effective mechanisms to discover, develop and prioritise biological targets to helping pharmaceutical companies reduce asthma attacks and hospital admissions in asthma of varying severity and mechanistic sub-type
• develop new systems, models and tools for the phenotypic stratification of asthma, and determine priority needs of sub-groups
• identify innovations needed in health and care systems to put individual patients at the heart of asthma management/treatment, and improve outcomes with better diagnostic and patient self-management plans
• review research gaps in treatment of asthma identified at national and international levels, and rank in priority order
• identify and internationally ratify a list of research objectives of greatest potential added value in the treatment and management of asthma and produce a Roadmap setting out priorities for the research and innovations needed
• address the fragmentation of research approaches and healthcare systems in the management of asthma that has resulted in European countries being 14 of the world's worst 20 for prevalence of asthma in adults, and bring together European stakeholders who will together to address specific Objectives, and review how best to establish a European Innovation Partnership, its Vision, Strategic Priorities, Priority Actions, representative core membership, organisational and governance structure, and requirements for wider interactions