Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) 2 has just launched its 3rd call for proposals. The first topic on the call is titled RADAR: Remote Assessment of Disease and Relapse programme, which is exploring ways to ensure that the healthcare system moves from a ‘diagnose and treat’ stance to a ‘predict and pre-empt’ approach.

 

 

The first application will be in CNS and epilepsy is specifically mentioned as follows:

Need and opportunity for public-private collaborative research

The RADAR programme aims to test if new pre-emptive therapeutic strategies based on remote continuous monitoring are both scientifically feasible and also practically feasible as part of a wider healthcare system.

Scientific feasibility will be performed via the individual topics of the RADAR programme to focus on the specifics of different disease areas. The first topic, detailed below, will study the fluctuation of the chronic diseases of depression, multiple sclerosis (MS) and epilepsy using remote monitoring technology to provide a foundation for developing a novel paradigm based on prediction and pre-emption. In the future, we intend to add other diseases to the CNS topic, such as pain and schizophrenia, and also add further topics in other disease areas such as airways disease and diabetes. Research in these areas needs to bring together physicians, patient groups, sensor manufactures, ICT providers, data management and analyst specialists with the pharmaceutical industry.

Introducing a therapeutic strategy based on such science and technology requires a second type of public private research to be undertaken to 1) develop policy for the regulatory and licensing pathways to deliver a digital intervention 2) understand and develop a framework to support new digital based interactions between patients and health care providers. This will require key stakeholders such as patient groups, regulators, healthcare providers, communications organisations, device manufactures and infrastructure providers to understand and develop a roadmap of how such interventions can be deployed effectively and safely.

Download the documentation CLICK HERE

Full information is available on the IMI website www.imi.europa.eu.