The project involves 27 partners including patient associations, hospitals and universities.
Almirall – a company focused on skin health – is participating in Facilitate, a patient-driven innovative medicines initiative project that aims to provide patients with access to clinical trial participant data.
Facilitate is based on a patient-centred, data-driven technology platform with 27 partners from 17 EU and non-EU member states.
The main objective of the study is to help ‘return’ clinical trial data to the study participants for reuse, either in further research or in healthcare practice. These targets are designed to improve the current situation where clinical data is isolated in separate repositories and, therefore, cannot be used outside the specific clinical trial.
Almirall’s main contribution will involve providing expertise in privacy and pharmaceutical law issues, as well as developing guidance, standards and recommendations for the return of clinical trial data to patients. The company will also contribute its expertise in the specification of clinical trial use cases and the development of end-user tools.
Participants include hospitals, universities, patient associations, innovative enterprises and members of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations.
Diego Herrera, Almirall’s Facilitate Project Leader, explained: “The launch of Facilitate further advances patient empowerment in clinical trials. At Almirall, we are excited to contribute to this patient-driven IMI project with our solid experience in clinical trials and our commitment to ethics and transparency. This project is fully aligned with our patient-centricity strategy aimed at improving their quality of life.”
Professor Johanna Blom, the vice-coordinator of Facilitate, added: “FACILITATE is an IMI-JU project that builds on the collaborative efforts of many public and private partners and has the purpose to manage the return of individual clinical trial data in a trusted legal and ethical environment.
“Leveraging on a patient’s needs, FACILITATE aspiration is to develop a prototype process which enables the return of clinical trial data during and after the clinical trial and allows for the secondary use of that data,” she added.