Pan European Disease Specific Investigator Networks Workshop
The Clinical Research Investment Plan has the ambition to make Europe a single area for clinical research, creating an ecosystem more attractive for industry-sponsored trials and more competitive for investigator-initiated studies. It includes provisions to facilitate multinational clinical trials in Europe through improvement in the regulatory oversight, through the development of appropriate funding mechanisms, and through consolidation of Europe’s clinical research infrastructure.
Currently ECRIN (the European Clinical Research Infrastructure Network) provides generic (e.g. disease-agnostic) trial management services to the single sponsor in Europe for the design, planning and conduct of multinational clinical trials. Consolidating the European clinical research infrastructure would now require supporting the establishment of pan-European, disease-specific investigation and research networks, connected to ECRIN and delivering complementary services expertise:
- prioritising the scientific questions requiring pan-European investigator-initiated clinical trials
- boosting the recruitment and investigation capacity, both for industry-sponsored and investigator-initiated trials.
Some countries have successfully developed, with limited investment, national disease-specific investigation networks, in particular Ireland, the Czech Republic and France (and outside Europe, Australia). Scaling up such investigation and research networks from national to pan-European level could be an affordable solution to consolidate the European clinical research ecosystem.
A small workshop, this event is open upon invitation only.
