The Consortium’s role is to provide digital tools that enable patients and medical professionals to build a holistic view of their health, to leverage this wealth of data to accelerate medical research in the country
The Republic of Armenia
Ministry of Health embraces national digital health agenda, partnering
with WHISE-Embleema to digitise healthcare data in order to promote
science research.
Patients will benefit from access to
real-time healthcare data to better inform research in high prevalence
diseases areas, including cancer, haematological, immune system and
endocrine disorders.
The Government of the Republic of Armenia has announced a partnership with the WHISE-Embleema Consortium,
an organisation whose mission is to accelerate the research and
development of innovative new medical treatments, by providing
incentives for the use of health data through patient ownership, via the
exchange of proprietary data, and add value through intellectual and
analytic insights.
The Consortium’s role is to provide
digital tools that enable patients and medical professionals to build a
holistic view of their health, to leverage this wealth of data to
accelerate medical research in the country.
In collaboration and under the guidance
of the Ministry of Health, the WHISE-Embleema Consortium has
established a WHISE-Armenia non-for-profit foundation. Armenian health
officials led by Dr. Arsen Torosyan and WHISE leadership have negotiated
conditions that will permit the WHISE Consortium and its affiliate
members led by Dr. Prof. Vahan Simonyan to audit existing digital and
paper data ecosystems, to propose and implement novel technologies for
digital healthcare, and connect cohorts with international research
organisations. WHISE-Armenia will host a set of integrated health data
hubs, that will allow medical organisations to integrate a variety of
healthcare datasets, to secure patient privacy and empower patients,
doctors and clinical organisations to stay in control of their data.
This partnership’s mission is to lay
out a foundation for the collection of trustworthy health data, built on
blockchain technology and regulatory HIVE analytics, to enable patient
ownership of information generated on their behalf, opt-in for
pre-clinical or clinical research by providing informed consent to
accelerate information exchanges. This will lead to the harmonisation of
the digital processes through WHISE-Embleema protocols, to build up
longitudinal datasets from multiple hospitals and clinics in form of
medical histories, genomes, lab results, adverse event reports,
insurance payments, and wellness information from wearables.
Arsen Torosyan, Minister of Health of
the Republic of Armenia said, “We welcome this project and are pleased
to cooperate with WHISE-Embleema Consortium. The Government of the
Republic of Armenia and the Ministry of Health are ready to support the
Ecosystem Modernisation and Development Initiative in Armenia, which
will increase productivity of doctors, improve health facilities and
patient's social status. All this implies a higher quality of data
collection and its more accurate analysis. As a result of the
digitalisation of health data, we expect improvement of healthcare
quality and decline in comorbidity.”
The practical next step by the WHISE-Armenia foundation is to integrate with institutions and care centres involved in building health data and patient registries, namely from the Center of Medical Genetics and Primary Healthcare, Oncology and Hematology Centers, as well as other research and clinical facilities.
Data aggregated by the project will be
marketised through the WHISE-Armenia portal, so that industry partners
may finance specific research. The funds will be redistributed as a pay
to patients, and their physicians, as well as to clinics and hospitals
to cover the gaps in existing infrastructure, remodel and renovate
hospital facilities, purchase new laboratory equipment, and educate
doctors and nurses for clinical trial conduct.
Dr. Prof Vahan Simonyan, President of
WHISE-Armenia and former Director of Bioinformatics Research and
Development at the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) said, “We
are excited and honoured to receive this endorsement from Armenia.
Patient owned data can transform biomedical research, allowing
information generated in the process of care to generate reliable,
continuous real-world data regarding a medical product's benefit and
risk profiles pre and post FDA market approval. Faster, standardised
real-world data in combination with genomic data evidence that we intend
to fund, will accelerate the availability of new treatments and improve
the safety and the discovery of new therapeutic indications, some of
which are endemic in Armenia. Armenia is one of the oldest countries
with a lot of hope and inspiration in its newly elected democratic
leadership. We are dedicated in this partnership and investment into the
country’s future to engage the leaders and scientists to benefit
patients in Armenia.”
Alexis Normand, Head of the Embleema
Blockchain Consortium added, "We are honoured to participate in this
strategic partnership with Armenia, and we are convinced that this will
bring significant benefits to patients, by offering physicians better
access to health data and connect Armenia to international research,
namely in oncology, immunotherapy and molecular medicine. By
streamlining the collection and sharing of clinical information, while
ensuring patient consent, we aim to accelerate the development of new
drugs and improve the real-world data collection of marketed drugs."
After patient cohorts of interests have
been allocated, WHISE-Embleema through its affiliate WHISE-Armenia will
attract clinical trials and satellite industries to Armenia. The first
round of operations will target such endemic conditions as oncology,
hematological, immune system and endocrine system diseases. Aggregated
data across healthcare providers is expected to generate value for other
disease areas of interest as time progresses.
Source: biospectrumasia.com