On 20 February 2015, the Director of the VPH Institute Adriano Henney, announced that work is underway on the establishment of the Avicenna Alliance, the industry and market-focused arm of VPH.
The Avicenna Alliance 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.
Building on the rapid and lucrative successes of advocacy efforts so far in securing funding in Horizon 2020 and ongoing efforts to promote in silico medicine in policy, the Avicenna Alliance will provide a formal body that can respond to the market needs of the in silico industry.
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 med-tech industry requires new resources to track these developments.
A major conversation is about to begin on in silico policy at EU level. The Avicenna Alliance intends not just to respond to policy on in silico medicine, but to work towards its creation from the very beginning.
For those who may be interested in joining the Avicenna Alliance and having a seat at the table, more information is available here.
