Horizon 2020 – Three amendments on CAM integrated in the final report

As mentioned in the ECHAMP e-News December 2012, the European Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) voted on the final version of the Horizon 2020 text on 28 November. The Horizon 2020 is the proposed overarching EU funding programme for research and innovation, which will run from 2014 until 2020.

German Christian-Democrat MEP Angelika Niebler, tabled three amendments stating that interventions of complementary and alternative medicine should be included in efforts to maintain effective health and care for all ages. Reference to complementary and alternative medicine was definitely adopted by the ITRE committee. Hereunder are the three amendments integrated in the final text. As the next step, the report should be voted in the Plenary Session of the European Parliament before the summer break and it will then need to be accepted by the Council of Ministers.

1. Annex 1 – section 3 – point 1 – paragraph 3

Text proposed by the Commission and amended by the ITRE Committee
An increasing disease and disability burden in the context of an aging population places further demands on health and care sectors. If effective health and care is to be maintained for all ages, efforts are required to improve decision making in prevention and treatment provision, to identify and support the dissemination of best practice in the healthcare sector, and to support integrated care also including interventions of complementary and alternative medicine and the uptake of technological, organisational and social innovations empowering older persons in particular to remain active and independent. Doing so will contribute to increasing, and lengthening the duration of their physical, social, and mental wellbeing.

Justification
In order to ensure future funding for research in the field of complementary and alternativemedicine, it should explicitly be mentioned in the specific programme.

2. Annex 1 – section 3 – point 1 – point 1.8 – paragraph 1

Text proposed by the Commission and amended by the ITRE Committee
There is a need to support the improvement of cross-cutting support technologies for drugs, vaccines and other therapeutic approaches, including transplantation, gene and cell therapy; to increase success in the drug and vaccine development process (including alternative methods to replace classical safety and effectiveness testing e.g. the development of new methods); to develop regenerative medicine approaches, including approaches based on stem cells; to develop improved medical and assistive devices and systems; to  maintain and enhance our ability to combat communicable, rare, major and chronic diseases and undertake medical interventions that depend on the availability of effective antimicrobial drugs; and to develop comprehensive approaches to treat co-morbidities at all ages and avoid poly-pharmacy in due consideration of complementary and alternative medicine. These improvements will facilitate the development of new, more efficient, effective and sustainable treatments for disease and for the management of disability.

3. Annex 1 – section 3 – point 1 – point 1.14 – paragraph 1

Text proposed by the Commission and amended by the ITRE Committee
Supporting the management of chronic disease outside institutions also depends on improved cooperation between the providers of health comprising providers of complementary and alternative medicine and social or informal care. Research and innovative applications will be supported for decision making based on distributed  information, and for providing evidence for large scale deployments and market exploitation of novel solutions, including interoperable tele-health and tele-care services. Research and innovation to improve the organisation of long-term care delivery will also be supported.

Please click here to see all the amendments: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2009_2014/documents/itre/am/907/907980/907980en.pdf