Programme highlight: personalised medicine

Personalised medicine has been an important focus for ERS and was the subject of the ERS Presidential Summit, 2015. Great advances in technology and research have allowed greater scope for individualising treatment and it is essential that all stakeholders work together to effectively implement the changes this will bring for healthcare. The ERS Congress is a key date in the calendar for respiratory professionals to join together and share knowledge on this subject.

Chair of the ERS Science Council Professor Stephen Holgate said: "Personalised medicine has the potential to benefit a great number of respiratory patients. Better phenotyping, helped by and combined with better data from ehealth technologies using electronic patient records, analytical platforms and real-time monitoring, could lead to marked improvements in people's lives. Join the conversation on shaping and implementing personalisation with a global community of respiratory stakeholders at Congress."

Better understanding of phenotypes will aid better decisions for treatment options; this topic will be featuring in a number of sessions including Russia Day, which will include discussions on the personalisation of COPD, and updates from EU-funded projects AirPROM and U-BIOPRED, which are focusing on improving treatments for asthma and COPD.

Sessions and symposia throughout Congress are complemented by practical sessions dealing with the implementation of personalised medicine and educational sessions aimed at basic scientists as well as clinicians.

Below we highlight just some of the Congress sessions on offer for this topic. Browse the full programme online.

Date Time Title
26.09.2015 13:45 Session
Russia Day: COPD, asthma, and infection
26.09.2015 14:00 *Postgraduate course
PG15 Gene-environment interactions in lung disease: Understanding gene-environment interactions and the different exposures that occur at different stages of life
27.09.2015 10:45 Symposium
Practising personalised medicine: why, when, and how?
28.09.2015 08:30 Symposium
Respiratory research in the Netherlands: Beyond the Dutch hypothesis 
28.09.2015 08:30 Hot topics
Advancing therapies for cystic fibrosis
28.09.2015 13:00 Lunchtime session
Asthma: emerging risk factors and current management of the patient: a joint ERS/Lancet session
28.09.2015 13:00 *Meet the expert
ME4 Asthma susceptibility: From pathophysiology to personalised medicine
28.09.2015 13:00 Lunchtime session
EU project AirPROM: Structured functional relationships
29.09.2015 08:30 Oral Presentation
Novel targets and strategies for the treatment of cough, asthma, rhinosinusitis and COPD
29.09.2015 14:45 Symposium
Stop immune tolerance in lung cancer!
30.09.2015 10:45 Hot topics
Lung cancer pathology: The new 2015 WHO classification and genetic heterogeneity 

*Registration for these courses is additional to the Congress registration fee. Junior members can register for sessions at a reduced rate.