Finnish biobanking gets attention at the EAPM Congress in Milan

Finnish biobanking gets attention at the EAPM Congress in Milan

28.11.2018

Today is the last day of the European Alliance for Personalised Medicine Congress, which was held in Milan in Italy with the theme “Forward as One: Integrating Innovation into Europe’s Healthcare Systems”. Personalised Medicine is the future for medical research and clinical care. EAPM is a European organisation aiming at enhancing the different aspects of personalised medicine. Different European countries were sharing the experiences, models and challenges in the regional track sessions in order to build sustainable paths to develop functional systems for personalised medicine. Data sharing is one of the critical issues to tackle together. Johanna Arola, Professor of Molecular Pathology at the Helsinki University, presented the Finnish biobank framework and the advanced health data available in Finland. Biobanks is one of the pillars of the Finnish Health Strategy. The Finnish biobanking system was taken as a positive and encouraging model for others. Arola also mentioned a Finnish public private partnership project called FinnGen aiming at collecting 500 000 genomas for research use. Another interesting topic treated in the genomic trach is the MEGA initiatives standing for Million European Genomes Alliance. A truly pan European collaboration initiative.