Work in Parliament H2020 - Seminar on EU health research policy

Today in the European Parliament, Maria da Graça Carvalho held a meeting along with the Alliance for Biomedical Research in Europe, a high-level meeting to brainstorm with key drivers in EU health research policy.

The main objective of this session was to create a platform on health research through Horizon 2020 that "may act as an embrion of what might be called a European Health Research Council", as Ms carvalho declared.  

During her intervention, Ms. Carvalho spoke about how best to "further European research with regard to the biomedical domain, and more particularly how to further collaboration between the Alliance for Biomedical Research - a unified voice for the biomedical community - and the EU institutions". 

Maria da Graça Carvalho believes that Horizon 2020 provides "a window of opportunity in a time of severe economic upheaval". The number of elderly people in the EU are rising, there is a mounting demand for high-quality health services and the expectations are increasing by patients to avail of the breakthroughs in personalised medicine. In this sense, Ms Carvalho believes that "investing in strategies to coordinate and structure biomedical and clinical research in Europe can help us to save major costs in healthcare and advance our innovation and competitiveness".

The participants in the meeting included Ulf Smith - President Alliance for Biomedical Research in Europe; Karin Sipido - Vice President Alliance for Biomedical Research in Europe; Mariano Gago, Advicer to the Alliance for Biomedical Research in Europe; MEPs Christian Ehler, Vicky Ford, Peter Liese and Marisa Matias. From the European Commission will participate Patricia Reilly - Cabinet of Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn Research, Innovation and Science of the European Commission and Ruxandra Draghia-Akli - Director of the Health Directorate at the Research DG of the European Commission.

The Alliance for Biomedical Research in Europe currently encompasses 20 member societies representing approx. 200,000 researchers from leading European non-profit academic associations. It is led by an Executive Committee representing four key pan-European disease organisations: the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD), ECCO- the European CanCer Organisation, the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and the European Respiratory Society (ERS).

The Alliance is committed through its actions to promote excellence in European biomedical research and innovation with the goal of improving the health and well-being of all European citizens.

It has four key objectives in relation to its work at EU policy level:

1. Boost biomedical and clinical research with appropriate resourcing at the EU level;
2. Implement structured consultation with the biomedical researchers to ensure proper targeting and priority-setting for funding;
3. Create an interconnected and coherent EU biomedical research programme, including the creation of a "European Council for Health Research";
4. Enhance international cooperation and global initiative (See Position Paper here for more).

Further information here.