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Final APPROACH consortium meeting gathers over 60 project members to discuss the results from their research and the way forward
Over 60 members of the APPROACH consortium from 17 partner organisations participated in the last consortium meeting entitled “Celebrating successes from APPROACH: the way forward”. The meeting was organised as a hybrid event in Zeist, The Netherlands between the 8th-10th of November. It provided project members with the opportunity to share the progress of their work, reflect on their learnings and experiences in the project and discuss the way forward for the analysis of their data.
The first day of the meeting consisted of sessions focused on machine learning results on osteoarthritis progression prediction, biomarkers research – transcriptomics, lipidomics and proteomics, data from the APPROACH cohort, radiographic and MRI analysis and the sustainability plan for APPROACH.
Inmaculada Aguilera - Project Officer at the funder of APPROACH - the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), joined the meeting online and shared the IMI perspective toward the progress of the APPROACH project. Furthermore, Inmaculada shared opportunities for promotion of APPROACH’s results through IMI’s online and offline channels. She also spoke about the future of the IMI and its continuation into the Innovative Health Initiative, which officially launches in November/December 2021.
The second day of the meeting included scientific talks on topics such as the biochemical marker data from APPROACH, the relationship between motion and radiographic knee osteoarthritis, Artificial intelligence used in APPROACH and future machine learning analysis.
Why, how and when should researchers involve patients in their work?
All members from the APPROACH Patient Council (PC) attended the last project meeting and held a session on patient involvement. During this session the PC members shared their experience with patient involvement in the project, talked about their learnings, the challenges they came across and the ways these have been addressed. They also discussed ideas to improve patient involvement in research projects and gave specific pointers to APPROACH researchers about the best period and process to involve patients in their future work.
The way forward
The APPROACH consortium looks forward to the coming years during which APPROACH researchers will continue their analysis of results based on the data collected in the clinical trial. We would like to thank all clinical trial participants, patient council and consortium members for their dedication and contributions in the project for the past six and a half years!