During a symposium on 1 July on the concept of a self-learning healthcare system, the MLC Foundation announced its integration into Lygature. This guarantees the experience, expertise, and current services of MLCF for the future, while Lygature is expanding its expertise, being able to support large collaborations in the field of medical research and innovation even more broadly.
MLCF specializes in ethics and legislation to facilitate the use of personal data and human tissue for health research and public healthcare. Like Lygature, MLCF operates on a not-for-profit basis and is involved in several major European projects (explained below). Commenting on the collaboration, Evert-Ben van Veen, Founder and Director of MLCF says: “I am very happy with the integration of MLCF within Lygature. It allows us to benefit from the knowledge, network, and organizational infrastructure of Lygature, thereby enhancing our efforts to improve healthcare and health research, both now and in the future.” After his retirement, Van Veen will remain active as a senior expert within Lygature for two days a week.
Jorg Janssen, Managing Director of Lygature, states that MLCF’s expertise is both complementary and valuable to Lygature: “In almost all our projects in the Netherlands, Europe, and the rest of the world, there are issues around privacy, ethics, authority, and access to healthcare data. This new collaboration expands our offering, allowing Lygature to provide even better partnership management support in the field of medical research. The move is in line with our ambition of bringing together the full suite of expertise needed to facilitate the often-complex public-private partnerships for therapy development.”
Symposium
The collaboration will be further announced on 1 July, during a symposium on a learning healthcare system, organized by MLCF (also online from 1.30 PM to 5 PM). The symposium highlights the opportunities that a so-called ‘learning healthcare system’ can offer for improving healthcare, preventing illness, and developing new therapies. “In a learning healthcare system, we use the data that healthcare produces itself,” explains Van Veen. “What patients actually experience is the ultimate test of whether prevention and treatments work the way we would like as a society. MLCF has always championed that.”
About MLCF
MLCF researches and advises on the legal and ethical aspects of scientific research in healthcare. This is done from a broad expertise in health law, European law, privacy legislation and the ethics of research, as well as involvement in the public values that must be safeguarded in such research.
In all projects in which MLCF is involved, MLCF leads the overarching ethical and legal framework to achieve the goals of the project. For example, IDEA-FAST investigates how digital measurements in the home situation can improve patient care. The HEAP exposome project investigates the complex relationship between environmental factors and other factors – from lifestyle to genetics – that influence our health. DELIVER will soon be launched, which aims to both bring the quality and access to dental care in the EU to a higher level.
Well-known MLCF customers include COREON (Regulation Research Committee), Nivel, and Health-RI’s ELSI (Ethical, Legal and Societal Implications)-servicedesk. MLCF is currently also supporting Lareb in setting up a study looking into the side effects of the covid vaccinations. Together with COREON, MLCF was also the driving force behind the recent Dutch Code of Conduct for Health Research.
More information can be found on the MLCF website: www.mlcf.eu
About Lygature
Lygature is a not-for-profit organization that drives medical innovations to address unmet medical needs worldwide. Current challenges in health care require collaboration across disciplines and stakeholder groups. With fifty colleagues, Lygature provides partnership management for large and complex public-private partnerships that bring together academia, industry, health foundations, and patients. As an independent third party, Lygature is a proud contributor to the success of many different initiatives, including the European Lead Factory, Health-RI, Oncode Institute, the Regulatory Science Network Netherlands, Health Innovation Netherlands, RADAR-AD and the Pediatric Praziquantel Consortium.
Our mission: Pioneering Medicine. Together.
More information can be found on the Lygature website: www.lygature.org