The Avicenna Alliance - an association of industry and research organisations that have a commercial or research interest in in silico medicine.
A key question of the concluding Avicenna event in Barcelona earlier this month was – what next? In order to ensure that the sterling work done by all those who have contributed and that the roadmap is implemented, and the in silico community represented, VPH Director Adriano Henney presented the goals of the new Association for Predictive Medicine. Full presentation can be downloaded here.
The Association for Predictive Medicine will be an association of industry and research organisations that have a commercial or research interest in in silico medicine. By working with members and policy makers to identify bottlenecks to in silico research and marketing of in silico products, the Avicenna Alliance will establish itself as the go-to organisation for all things related to in silico medicine in the EU policy environment.
Given the overwhelming interest in establishing a pre-competitive organisation, a small extemporary board is being established to find agreement on key issues such as governance model, the role of the VPH Institute within the Association and activities for 2016.
A new website is being developed as a platform for the Association’s activities and outreach is currently underway to interested parties to show the benefits of Membership.
Those industries that are currently engaged with in silico technologies are faced with a multitude of regulatory and policy obstacles and should look to the Avicenna Alliance for solutions.
Producers of medicinal products have an interest in ensuring the validation of in silico models to mitigate the continuous rise in cost of research into new products in particular in toxicology.
The Cosmetics industry already reeling as a result of a ban on animal testing for cosmetic purposes remains under siege by the “stop vivisection” campaign underway at EU level and is desperately looking to alternatives ways of proving the safety of their products.
Software industries using in silico models need to ensure that the Data Protection Regulation does not impede their required access to large-scale data sets for health purposes.
The medical devices industry has suffered major public-perception and policy set backs as a result of the medical devices regulation. With lines between software, applications and medical devices increasingly blurred, the medtech industry requires new resources to track these developments.
A major conversation is about to begin on in silico policy at EU level. The Association for Predictive Medicine intends not just to respond to policy on in silico medicine, but aims to influence policy from the very beginning as it is being created.
For those who may be interested in joining the Avicenna Alliance and having a seat at the table, email Adriano Henney at director@vph-institute.org
