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The uptake of personalised medicine encounters different difficulties according to regional particularities. Especially regions that are remote, rural, or sparsely populated face challenges that are greater than urban or capital regions. Isolated populations may have specific genetic backgrounds that predispose them to particular illnesses. Hospitals may be far away and difficult to reach. Rural populations are often aging populations that may not be sufficiently digitally knowledgeable for receiving care through digital means. If all European citizens are to enjoy the benefits of personalised healthcare, which entails tailoring therapies to patients’ genotypic and phenotypic traits and a shift to preventive medicine, then the infrastructure and institutions of remote, rural, and sparsely populated regions must be equipped to deal with data collecting and sharing, privacy and security issues, patient education, and so on.

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The SAPHIRe consortium will organise a series of online interactive workshops on the specific needs in different regions concerning personalised medicine. The topic of the first webinar will be ‘Problems and solutions for personalised healthcare in remote, rural, and sparsely populated regions’, which will be organised on Tuesday 20 April 2021, 10h00-12h30 CET.

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The topics discussed will include:

• Personalised healthcare for remote and rural areas

• Digital needs and preparedness of GPs in rural and isolated areas

• Distance-spanning technologies and telemedicine

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Speaker bios

Abstracts

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Speakers:

• Anna L. Prytherch, Project Manager at Rural Health and Care Wales

• Professor Adrián Llerena, Scientific Director of the Medea Project

• Dr Jean Pierre Jacquet, President European Rural and Isolated Practitioners Association (EURIPA)

• Dr Anna Lundgren, Senior Research Fellow at Nordregio

• Dr Kári Stefánsson, CEO of deCODE 

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