A €8.6m EU funded cross-border Centre for Personalised Medicine that will improve clinical decision making and patient safety for dementia, diabetes, cardiovascular, acute kidney injury and emergency surgery has been officially launched.

Funded by the European Union’s INTERREG VA Programme, managed by the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB), the Centre for Personalised Medicine brings together 14 academic, healthcare provider and enterprise partner organisations, including Randox Laboratories, to work together to deliver practical solutions to clinicians to ensure that patients get the right treatment at the right time.

Personalised medicine moves away from the ‘one size, fits all’ approach, using state of the art genomics testing, technology and computing and intelligence systems to deliver a more targeted approach.

Lead investigator of the Centre, Professor Tony Bjourson, Professor of Genomics at Ulster University and Director of the Northern Ireland Centre for Stratified Medicine said:

“The Centre for Personalised Medicine will bring personalised medicine approaches to five of the most prevalent disease areas to improve the care and treatment of patients in Northern Ireland, the border region of Ireland and Western Scotland.  This collaboration extends partnership working to key clinicians in the health sector ensuring that we address real world issues across the five disease areas.”

Dr Kenneth Martin, Senior R&D Scientist at Randox Laboratories, explained Randox’s role in the Centre for Personalised Medicine;

“Our highly committed R&D programme here at Randox means that we have more than 490 new tests currently in development – more than any other diagnostics company – across a range of pressing health challenges, including dementia, cardio-metabolic syndrome and renal disease. These tests, developed on our patented Biochip Array Technology which can conduct multiple patient tests simultaneously, can work to identify patients who will benefit from tailored therapeutics for enhanced efficacy.  The CPM project will use Randox Arrays in four of the five research clusters in the project to determine how the information they provide can benefit clinical decision making. We aim to provide clinicians with the tools they need to make more accurate and better-informed decisions for their patients. This means that countermeasures can be taken at the earliest possible opportunity, when treatment is most likely to succeed.”

Welcoming the project Gina McIntyre, CEO of the Special EU Programmes Body, said: 

“This project reflects one of the core objectives of the INTERREG VA Programme, to improve access to healthcare services for thousands of citizens. It has great potential as it will bring together a diverse range of cross-border partners to significantly improve clinical decision-making, and personalised treatment approaches, in the fight against five of the most common diseases.”

Match-funding for this project has been provided by the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation in Ireland and the Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland.

For more information on the Centre for Personalised Medicine please contact the Randox PR team on 028 9442 2413 or by emailing randoxpr@randox.com