Awareness Events

Objectives and set-up of awareness events

Systems medicine is an interdisciplinary approach combining methodologies, tools and insight from the systems biology, clinical and patient communities. Systems medicine is the first necessary step towards personalised medicine. By applying a systems medicine approach, the cause of human diseases becomes more evident, thereby creating options for early diagnosis and treatment, drug design and prevention. As such it holds great potential for a more comprehensive understanding of health and disease.

Aims

In many medical centers systems medicine is not yet common practice. To further enhance awareness in the clinic and beyond, ERACoSysMed organized awareness events to inform various stakeholders about success stories of systems medicine. It brought together key players from various disciplines and provided a forward looking forum to demonstrate state of the art, discuss challenges and reflect about the future perspective of systems medicine.

 Depending on national interests and needs, each awareness event focused on specific objectives for the target audience, such as:

  • Improving awareness of the systems medicine approach and how it can be helpful in daily practice
  • Exchanging opinions
  • Meeting potential collaboration partners
  • Introducing systems medicine topics into medical schools‘ curricula and future orientations

Series of awareness events

To stimulate early adoption of Systems Medicine, the awareness events were held mainly in the onset of ERACoSysMed instead of organising events on a strictly annual basis. Awareness event were held in

Workshops

“Generating Impact in Clinical Practice”

Paris, 30 October 2019

ZonMw organized a workshop for the projects funded in its first and second transnational calls to identify potential impact of these projects on clinical practice and for the benefit of the patients. The aim of the workshop was to discuss bottlenecks, challenges and needs to achieve significant impact. The workshop ended with a plenary discussion on lessons learned and future directions. Participants were project leaders and project participants involved in JTC-1 and JTC-2, representatives of the funding agencies and Scientific Advisory Board members. For a short summary of the workshop outcomes please click here. For a short video presenting possible impact of some of the funded projects please click here.

Annual workshops

During the ERACoSysMed project four workshops were organised, mostly in the preparation phase of new joint transnational calls (JTCs). The aims of the workshops varied from defining call topics and procedures for future JTCs, exploring ways to integrate different aspects  to learning more about European initiatives related to systems medicine and to explore collaboration opportunities.

The following workshops were held:

Call topic workshop for JTC-2 (Rome, 2015)
The aim of this workshop was to find new topics that match national research priorities and which can be used in subsequent Joint Transnational Calls. During the workshop there were group- and plenary discussions on which topic Europe should focus to stimulate the development of systems medicine. Participants were members of the Scientific Advisory Board and representatives of the funding agencies involved.

Call procedure workshop for JTC-2 (Bratislava, 2016)
The aims of this workshop were (I) to determine the call topic and procedures for the second ERACoSysMed Joint Transnational Call (JTC-2) and (II) to explore in what way data management and patient participation can be integrated in JTC-2. Two organisations were invited: (I) FAIRDOM on data management and (II) European Federation of Allergy and Airways Diseases Patient Associations (EFA) on patient participation. In addition,  the call topic and call procedures were discussed during this meeting. Participants were several representatives of the Scientific Advisory Board and representatives of the funding agencies involved.

Connections with other EU initiatives: ERASysAPP, CASyM and PerMed (Milan, 2016)
The aims of this workshop were (I) to learn more about EU initiatives related to Systems Medicine and (II) to explore common grounds between the fields of systems medicine and personalised medicine. Possibilities to stimulate closing the gap between those fields and extend the collaboration in activities organized within different initiatives were discussed. Three European initiatives were selected to present themselves: (I) ERASysAPP (2013-2015), (II) CASyM (2012-2017) and (III) ICPerMed (from 2016 onwards). Participants were several representatives of the Scientific Advisory Board and representatives of the funding agencies involved.

Call topic and procedure workshop for JTC-3 (Paris, 2018)
The aim of this workshop was to identify the topic of the third ERACoSysMed Joint Transnational Call (JTC-3). Prior to the workshop suggestions for call topics were collected through an online questionnaire among various stakeholders from the systems medicine community. Call topic suggestions were ranked by Scientific Advisory Board members. The workshop started with presentations by the proposers of call topics. Subsequently, representatives of the funding agencies discussed the procedures during the workshop.

Workshops organised by MIZS jointly with the University of Ljubljana

A survey on systems medicine in general was performed by the Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana (UL), Slovenia. The survey results provided topics for two workshops:

1) Implementation of Systems Medicine education in medical schools (8-9 June 2017) and

2) Integration of Systems Medicine into clinical practice and research (10th - 11th June 2019).

These workshops were jointly organised by the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport, Slovenia (MIZS) and Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana (UL), Slovenia In Ljubljana.

For the reports of the workshops click here.