Europe is kicking off the political year with reform plans that lay out a roadmap of steps to improve the economy across the board, including health. The eagerly awaited report titled “The future of European competitiveness,” or the “Draghi report” after its author Mario Draghi, the former president of the European Central Bank from 2011 to 2019, was released by the European Commission on September 9.
The main driving force behind this report of almost 70 pages is to make progress in terms of innovation to reach the level of the United States and China, focusing on advanced technologies. On this basis, the document is based on sustainable competitiveness and fair competition through economic security and open strategic autonomy.
From these four general pillars, some main points focused on the field of health are extracted, which are especially important because they are in this line of innovation: transforming the strong health systems that exist in Europe into competitive industries, developing AI in the health sector, accelerating the European health data space or making progress in genomic sequencing.
AI in healthcare
According to the Commission, Draghi is “one of Europe’s great economic minds” and he has a position of authority within the EU, which is why it commissioned this report from him. According to the organization, “Europe needs to look ahead and define how to remain competitive.”
It is clear that artificial intelligence is taking a bigger place in the political debate, establishing itself as an essential point to take into account in all areas, including health. Mario Draghi has a firm objective: to promote the development of AI in ten strategic sectors, including healthcare and the pharmaceutical industry.
The economist argues that these sectors would benefit the most from its implementation. The report proposes a so-called “Vertical AI Priority Plan” to promote the integration of artificial intelligence through data sharing and cross-sector coordination. “The development of vertical AI depends on industrial actors working together with AI researchers and the private sector to define problems in different sectors,” he explains in the document.
Companies participating in this plan will receive funding from the EU to develop AI-based models and experiment in this area. Since large data sets are not available in the Union to train the models, companies must provide the information voluntarily.
The use of data in the EU is closely linked to the development of AI. On April 24 of this year, the European Parliament approved the European Health Data Space (EEDS), an initiative to give people easy access to their personal electronic health data, with control over it, as well as being able to direct it to public interest purposes such as scientific research, explain the European Council and the Council of the European Union. “It provides a specific data environment in the health sector that will contribute to promoting a single market for digital health services and products,” they explain.
It is part of a larger project, the European Data Strategy, which seeks to “make the Union a pioneer in a data-driven society”, in the words of the European Commission. On this, Draghi emphasizes that it is necessary to accelerate the digitalization of health systems, with special importance given to facilitating the exchange of medical records. Currently, the General Data Protection Regulation has options and allows the use of patient data for research, but implementation has not been the same across all member states, so a large amount of this data available to researchers goes to waste.
In this section, he discusses the situation of the pharmaceutical industry, which is losing notoriety in the environment due to low investment in R&D and regulatory fragmentation. The economist proposes that the secondary use of these health data should be opened to reduce this trend and boost pharmaceutical activities within the EU. “
Although the EU pharmaceutical sector remains the world leader in trade in terms of value, it is losing ground in the most dynamic market segments and losing market share to US companies,” he elaborated in the report. Genome sequencing is also part of the strategies proposed by the former ECB director to promote innovation in the EU.
He intends to create a strategic plan that extends beyond 2026, which has its core in the European action “1+ Million Genomes”, which aims to sequence and analyze the genomes of more than one million people to advance genetic research and improve personalized medicine.
The initiative aims to create a comprehensive genomic database that will allow the discovery of new relationships between genes and diseases, develop more effective and personalized treatments, and foster collaboration between countries and research centers.
In this regard, the report emphasises the importance of providing clear information on the use of artificial intelligence throughout the life cycle of medicines, in order to fully exploit the possibilities offered by EEDS. In particular, it refers to the analysis of “raw” clinical data transmitted to the European Medicines Agency and data collected for pharmacovigilance purposes. It also focuses on making the EU more attractive for carrying out clinical trials.
In conclusion, the Commission puts forward a proposal that directly affects the existing gap in the financing of the pharmaceutical sector, arguing that EU funds should be directed towards the creation of life science innovation centres to develop advanced medical medicines.