Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PERMIDES (Personsalised Medicine Innovation through Digital Enterprise Solutions)

Teaser

Finding the “right treatment for the right patient at the right time” is the overall goal of Personalised Medicine. With a constantly growing amount of patient-related data, digital solutions are key to uncovering individual conditions that may determine whether a drug...

Summary

Finding the “right treatment for the right patient at the right time” is the overall goal of Personalised Medicine. With a constantly growing amount of patient-related data, digital solutions are key to uncovering individual conditions that may determine whether a drug will be effective, ineffective, or even harmful. Decreasing the number of false treatments, reducing the consequences of harmful side effects, and improving the patient’s health status with the right drug will not only improve the patient’s life quality, but will also reduce healthcare costs.

Precision medicine “… is one of the biggest opportunities for breakthroughs in medicine that we have ever seen” (President Obama, Jan 2015) and is one of the emerging industries with high growth and innovation potential identified by the EU Commission (http://www.emergingindustries.eu). Research and development in Personalised Medicine should help to decrease costs for precision treatment even beneath the level of standardised blockbuster medication. Since only those patients will receive a certain treatment that will benefit from it, Personalised Medicine will be of great economic importance for both the health care and social systems. Another factor society will be faced with is the demographic change and its structural and economic challenges in terms of medical care. There is no doubt that an increasing number of elderly people will have an impact on the incidence rate of cancer. It is also expected, however, that a rising number of people will be suffering from metabolic syndrome, diabetes, or cardiovascular diseases. IT tools developed for cancer treatment might easily be adapted to other clinical applications, providing e.g. e-Health tools bilateral patient-clinician communication to enable Personalised Medicine in all common diseases.

The main objective of this project is to provide key solutions for the reconfiguration of the biopharmaceutical value chain in Personalised Medicine towards a Health Economy 4.0, with a special focus on oncology (i.e. cancer treatment). Advancing Personalised Medicine in the digital age requires solutions to issues currently driving the IT and software sector, e.g. Big Data, machine learning, IT security, data protection, and cross-enterprise collaboration.

In a cross-clustering approach, leading biopharma and IT clusters from three countries (Austria, Germany, and Norway) will create novel cross-sectoral collaborations between SMEs to address innovation barriers in the biopharma sector via cutting-edge IT solutions. This will be achieved through an open collaboration space consisting of workshops, a semantic online matchmaking portal, and matchmaking events, allowing biopharma enterprises to identify suitable partners among the IT companies of the participating clusters. The biopharmaceutical SME and the IT partner will jointly tackle an innovation barrier in the value chain using an innovation voucher scheme. As a welcome side effect of pairing SMEs from the biopharma and IT sectors would be the entry of participating IT companies into the evolving and highly attractive Digital Health sector.

Work performed

The consortium pursued following general objectives of the project during the timeframe 01.09.2016-31.08.2017:
- Cross-clustering approach: create novel cross-sectorial collaborations
- Create a collaboration space consisting of workshops, a semantic online matchmaking portal and by matchmaking events

To create awareness about the project and the upcoming calls for innovation projects, the consortium implemented several Digital Health Fora on national as well as on international level from the very beginning of the project, focusing on cross-sectorial meeting places where the latest trends in the IT and biopharma sectors were discussed. To start enabling novel cross-sectorial collaborations, 4 workshops on regional level (Frankfurt, Oslo, Vienna and Mainz) were implemented that brought together SMEs from biopharma and IT sector. By doing so, the consortium initiated a joint understanding of innovation barriers. The following instruments have been applied to spread the call and to raise attention: Press releases, project / consortium member websites and websites like European Cluster Collaboration Platform, social networks and entries in different newsletters, participation at conferences and through beneficiaries’ professional contacts and related activities – conferences, workshops and bilateral discussions. The work included a preparation of information about calls for Innovation Voucher Awarding which was also published on the Research Participant Portal to reach a wider audience of applicants. To establish a recognition value, a PERMIDES project identity was created. Matchmaking events for the SMEs of the participating biopharma and IT clusters have taken place shortly after the call for innovation projects has been released.

Our SME partners i-views and NETSYNO designed and implemented the PERMIDES platform, based on yet achieved results, particularly needs of SMEs, and the work of the respective task forces. To create a collaboration space, semantic algorithms that were integrated into the PERMIDES matchmaking platform and that allow semantic-based intelligent matchmaking were developed. The PERMIDES matchmaking platform was launched in March 2017.
In parallel to the activities focusing on the calls for innovation projects, each of the PERMIDES partners got into contact with both national and regional innovation funding agencies to maximise the impact of the innovation projects initiated via PERMIDES, especially the Managing Authorities of ESIF. All partners started to establish synergies with regional and national funding agencies and will further advance these in the next reporting period based on the published calls and the first innovation project cases available. These connections and synergies are an important part to ensure sustainability of the innovation projects by identifying potential funding schemes.

To set up a transparent funding scheme for sub-projects, the PERMIDES consortium elaborated all necessary call-documents and related processes that are followed and that allow a clear documentation of the decision making, but also funding and financial monitoring processes.

All due deliverables were submitted on time, all planned milestones and results for this reporting period were achieved.

Final results

No applicable at this point of the project as even the innovation projects from the first call are right now in the phase of submitting their Interim Report which could be used for some forecasts.

Regarding expected results connected to the KPIs, we can state following:
- 75 SMEs were participating in 4 matchmaking events on regional and European levels (KPI already reached by 100%)
- 352 companies have enteried their profile into the semantic matchmaking portal (planned KPI: 100)
- 59 innovation projects between IT and biopharma companies, supported by innovation vouchers, were initiated (planned KPI: 90; current state: 22 Innovation vouchers and 37 consultancy vouchers)
- More than 125 SMEs were benefitting from technology transfer activities (planned KPI: 120)
more than 75 SMEs were benefitting from technology transfer through matchmaking events and DHF
45 SMEs initiated joint innovation projects (innovation vouchers)
37 SMEs initiated technology transfer via consultancy vouchers

Website & more info

More info: http://www.permides.eu.