A key role for an involvement in HARMONY to provide a policy framework to communicate to the regulatory policy makers what are the needs for the haematology community. A lot of great science, a lot of great research in the haematology area but then there’s a miscommunication to what policy makers can do to shape getting the best treatment for the patient. So this leads into the area of translational research, the whole issue around big data, around clinical trials and, of course, sharing of data. A lot of policies lack a context in that the politicians or policy makers don’t understand the issues and this haematology HARMONY project provides all the experts there that can provide a context - what kind of policy framework that is needed to shape the area going forward. This can be an example for other disease areas as well.

Tell us about your upcoming meeting in Belfast.

The Belfast meeting is a Presidency Congress under the Estonian Presidency. It’s going to bring together around 650 stakeholders, KOLs in the area. There are 250 speakers there. It will be in Belfast and it will be the last EU Presidency Congress in the UK so this is a big issue. The idea there is how can we bring innovation to healthcare systems. We have a lot of great research in Europe, a lot of great science in Europe but the big question is how can this be speeded up and what regulatory environments can support this. There will be one session in the congress on HARMONY, so to communicate to policy makers what HARMONY is, where we are now in this area, in the haematological area, where do we want to go and what are the next steps to go there.