The ITFoM (IT Future of Medicine) initiative aims to produce computational models of individuals – the “Virtual Patient” – to enable the prediction of their future health risks, progression of diseases and selection and efficacy of treatments while minimizing side effects.
As such, ITFoM integrates technology development in functional genomics and computer technologies to enable the generation of patient models to make them available for clinical application. The realization of the patient model is based on the recent breakthroughs in sequencing technology that enables the high-throughput analysis of a large number of individual genomes and transcriptomes.
In this the project follows the precedent in almost all other human endeavours: procedures on complex, hard to predict systems, with potentially dangerous and/or expensive consequences are almost always first modelled on a computer, to improve the quality of the decisions, to eliminate unnecessary risks and/or to cut costs. Such a model based personalised medicine and prevention would be the beginning of a revolution of healthcare and drug development in Europe.
Institutions, research groups and prospective funders from Europe and beyond which might be interested in joining and\or supporting ITFoM development are invited to contact the FLAG-ERA WP6 Leader, prof. Eugenio Guglielmelli (e.guglielmelli@unicampus.it) or the ITFoM Liaison Group Leader, (Hans Lehrach, lehrach@molgen.mpg.de – Ralf Sudbrak, sudbrak@molgen.mpg.de) for more information on the ongoing research activities.