Position paper of the EPMA and EFLM: a global vision of the consolidated promotion of an integrative medical approach to advance health care

Abstract

The authors consider acute problems in the quality and management of medical services challenging health care systems worldwide. This actuality has motivated the representatives of the European Association for Predictive, Preventive and Personalised Medicine and European Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine to consider the efforts in promoting an integrative approach based on multidisciplinary expertise to advance health care. The current paper provides a global overview of the problems related to medical services: pandemic scenario in the progression of common chronic diseases, delayed interventional approaches of reactive medicine, poor economy of health care systems, lack of specialised educational programmes, problematic ethical aspects of treatments as well as inadequate communication among professional groups and policymakers. Further, in the form of individual paragraphs, the article presents a consolidated position of the represented European organisations. This position is focused on the patients' needs, expert recommendations for the relevant medical fields and plausible solutions which have a potential to advance health care services if the long-term strategies were to be effectively implemented as proposed here.

Medicine in the early twenty-first century: paradigm and anticipation - EPMA position paper 2016

“…Since its very beginning, EPMA is systematically working on the economy of PPPM that is pivotal for advancing health care on European and global scale [6, 8, 20–22, 28, 30, 35, 37, 40, 71, 72, 79–82]. …”

Personalized laboratory medicine: a patient-centered future approach

“…This is especially true for cancer medicine [43], demanding genome-and phenome-wide approaches with focus on patients and their involvement in treatment decisions. This more complex laboratory medicine becomes multifactorial and requires accurate interpretation of health-related data of the individual patients where an effective information and communication technology (ICT) support is also needed [44]. Implementation of complex laboratory tests is the matter of reasonability measured by added value to data inter pretation and cost-effectiveness.…”

Predictive, Preventive and Personalised Medicine as the hardcore of ‘Horizon 2020’: EPMA position paper

“…However, corresponding standards might be introduced at the European level to promote inter-European mobility and to avoid economic discrepancies and conflict of interest [20]. …”

“…For many acute and chronic disorders, the current health care outcomes are considered as being inadequate [1,20]. Current health care practices essentially rely on the emergence of signs and symptoms of human pathologies prior to initiation of interventional modalities as illustrated in Figure 23A.…”