New Project for Orphanet
Orphanet is an EC-funded portal offering information and specific services for genetic and other rare diseases, and orphan drugs. A new project related to Orphanet has just been funded by the European Commission Research Directorate General 7th Framework Programme. The project, RareDiseasePlatform is a European platform of integrated information services for researchers in the field of rare diseases and orphan drugs to support team, and project building.
RareDiseasePlatform aims to provide researchers with a set of tools allowing them to identify other researchers. The tools are intended to facilitate the collaboration between academic teams, but also to aid links with Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and even major companies. The tools developed will contribute to building up a community of stakeholders with the ultimate goal of speeding up research and development in the field of rare diseases, to provide diagnostic tools and therapies as quickly as possible.
The project will be structured around three central approaches:
- Optimisation and integration of fragmented resources and data required for research and development in the field of rare diseases and orphan medicinal products.
- Contribution to business intelligence activity for SMEs.
- Facilitation of all types of partnership.
This project is based on the experience acquired from three EC funded projects:
- Orphanet (www.orpha.net) an information service (DG Public Health 2006-119) on rare diseases which is the most visited information service in this area (20,000 daily users)
- “orphanplatform” (LSSM-CT-2004-503246) which is considered as the pilot phase of the current application (www.orphanplatform.org)
- E-Rare which is an ERA-Net project on rare diseases (www.erare.eu)
The present project aims at establishing the platform of services for the researchers of 34 countries by April 2011. These countries are: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France (lead partner), Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland Italy, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Morocco, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Tunisia, Turkey and the United Kingdom.
