Dublin, 2 October 2026 — The European Alliance for Personalised Medicine will convene a high-level conference in Dublin on 2 October 2026, bringing together policymakers, patient representatives, clinicians, researchers, regulators, industry leaders and health-system stakeholders to examine how Europe can better translate innovation into routine patient benefit. The conference is co-organised by the Irish Patients’ Association, with Stephen McMahon playing a key role in ensuring that patient perspectives remain central to the discussion on innovation, access and implementation.
The event, titled “Innovation and Securing Patient Access to Personalised Medicine”, will take place at the RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, during the Irish Presidency. The conference will focus on one of the central challenges facing European health systems: how to ensure that scientific breakthroughs, advanced diagnostics and innovative treatments reach patients more quickly, consistently and equitably across Member States.
Europe has world-class science, strong regulatory expertise, leading companies and a clear ambition to become a global life sciences leader. However, innovation too often remains blocked by fragmented reimbursement pathways, uneven diagnostic capacity, slow evidence-to-implementation processes, limited data infrastructure and insufficient alignment between research, regulation, HTA, clinical practice and patient needs.
The Dublin conference will address these barriers directly, asking how personalised medicine can move from promise to practice.
A major focus of the conference will be whether Europe needs a dedicated Health Innovation Fund to bridge the gap between research, regulation, reimbursement and access. As negotiations on the next Multiannual Financial Framework intensify, the discussion will examine how health innovation can be recognised as central to European competitiveness, resilience and economic security. Drawing on examples such as the Italian Innovation Fund and the UK Cancer Drugs Fund, speakers will explore whether a European mechanism could help de-risk early adoption, support real-world evidence generation, enable adaptive payment models and reduce inequities between health systems.
The second session will focus on liquid biopsy and digital pathology as essential components of the diagnostic backbone of precision oncology. These technologies can support earlier diagnosis, more accurate molecular stratification, treatment selection, disease monitoring, recurrence detection and access to clinical trials. Yet access remains uneven, with many systems still facing gaps in reimbursement, laboratory capacity, interoperability, data governance, AI-enabled workflows and workforce readiness. The session will ask what is needed to embed advanced diagnostics into routine cancer care responsibly and equitably.
The third session, “Global Clinical Trials, Local Access,” will examine the disconnect between modern clinical evidence and real-world patient access. Innovative trial designs, including biomarker-defined cohorts, adaptive trials, single-arm studies, surrogate endpoints and real-world evidence, are transforming personalised medicine. However, national registration, HTA, reimbursement and implementation systems often apply different rules and expectations, creating delays for patients even after scientific success. The discussion will consider cancer, neurology, cardiology and obesity as areas where innovation is moving rapidly but health systems are not always ready to evaluate, fund and implement new approaches.
The closing session will bring together the key messages from the day and focus on practical political and policy follow-up under the Irish Presidency. Discussions will reflect on how Europe can invest in diagnostic readiness, support earlier access to transformative innovation, improve evidence-to-reimbursement pathways and ensure that patient benefit becomes the central measure of European leadership in personalised medicine.
The central message of the conference is clear: Europe should not measure its leadership in personalised medicine only by the innovations it discovers or approves, but by whether patients across Member States can benefit from them in routine care.
The event will take place on Friday, 2 October 2026, from 8:00 to 16:00 CET, at RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, 123 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland.