PERMIT final meeting: so long, not goodbye

On June 16th and 17th the PERMIT project consortium, personalised medicine experts and other invested stakeholders met in Milan (and online) at the Istituto di Recherche Farmacologiche Mario Negri to discuss the recommendations that were developed over the 2.5 years of the project.

After a review of the process, outcomes and lessons learned from the different work packages, Monika Frenzel gave the keynote address on the creation of the new European Partnership in personalised medicine. Walking us through the past, present and potential future of what the personalised medicine community represents in Europe, she outlined some of the aspects that have been identified by the draft coordination group regarding what they anticipate will be a cohesive network for personalised medicine.

On the second day of the final meeting, the different levels of the regulatory landscape were addressed by stakeholders from national and European bodies through a hybrid panel. The complicated landscape and fragmented interactions between the different regulatory and ethical bodies were shown to dampen a fluid process but all the actors agree that through recommendations such as those developed by the PERMIT project and sustained multi-stakeholder dialogue some of the existing challenges can be overcome. The dissemination and training were also addressed and will continue to be made available even after the end of the project. A second panel session was held with all present to identify any final gaps in the dissemination work conducted and any stakeholder groups that may have been missed.  Those present saluted the breadth of the project and its capacity to take into account the full personalised medicine pipeline from the stratification and early pre-clinical phases through to the clinical trials.

While the project comes to a close, the recommendations generated, communities of practice established, the open access publications, lay summaries and the trainings will live on to continue to inform decision making and practice in the personalised medicine pipeline, as well as to improve communication and implementation at all levels.