CyberEurope

Abstract

In this feature, we will try to describe the characteristics of current cyberpsychology research in Europe. In particular, CyberEurope aims at describing the leading research groups and projects running on the other side of the Ocean.

FET Flagship—The IT Future of Medicine project

Future and Emerging Technology (FET) Flagships are ambitious, large-scale, science-driven research initiatives (http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/programme/fet/flagship/) that aim to achieve a visionary goal. To provide lasting support at a level that allows a concerted effort toward fulfilling a grand ambition, FET Flagships are envisioned to run for at least 10 years, with a budget of up to 100 M€ per year, per initiative. The scientific advance should provide a strong and broad basis for future technological innovation and economic exploitation in a variety of areas, as well as novel benefits for society.

To prepare the launch of the FET Flagships, six Pilot Actions were funded over a period of 12 months starting in May 2011 whose contents will be discussed in this and in the next issues.

ITFoM: The IT Future of Medicine

For more info:

Prof. Hans Lehrach

Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, DE

www.itfom.eu/

Data-rich, individualized medicine poses unprecedented challenges for IT, in hardware, storage, and communication. ITFoM proposes a data-driven, individualized medicine of the future, based on the molecular, physiological, and anatomical data from individual patients.

ITFoM will make general models of human pathways, tissues, diseases, and ultimately of the human as a whole. Patient individualized versions of the models will then be used to identify personalized prevention/therapy schedules and side effects of drugs. This is the first time that huge IT implications of worldwide individualized patient care will be addressed in combination with genomics and medical requirements.

The project outcomes will enable calculation of health, disease, therapy, and its effects for individual patients. These may revolutionize our health care with enormous (i) benefits for health (prevention, diagnosis, and therapy); (ii) reduction in cost by individualizing combinations of a limited number of drugs; and (iii) new commercial opportunities in IT, analytics, and health care. This entails nothing less than the transformation of biomedical science from empirical and stochastic to fact based and knowledge driven, that is, based on an ICT paradigm.

What can Europe expect to gain?

We are entering a new era of medicine and with the supporting ICT systems, citizens will benefit from bespoke treatments and regimes, optimized to fit their individual metabolism, environment, and genetic make-up. This new information-intensive health care will offer more specific and better-tested treatment, enable preventive medicine, and improve clinical outcomes whilst reducing the costs of medical treatments. Furthermore, the technological advances required for individualized medicine will increasingly influence the wider ICT field and benefit many other areas.