Far from receding, the threats posed by infections with epidemic potential grow ever greater. Although Europe has amongst the best healthcare systems in the world, and also the world’s supreme researchers in this field, we lack co-ordination and linkage between networks that is required to respond fast to new threats. This consortium of consortia will streamline our response, using primary and secondary healthcare to detect cases with pandemic potential and to activate dynamic rapid investigation teams that will deploy shared resources across Europe to mitigate the impact of future pandemics on European health, infrastructure and economic integrity.
If funded, PREPARE will transform Europe’s response to future severe epidemics or pandemics by providing infrastructure, co-ordination and integration of existing clinical research networks, both in community and hospital settings. It represents a new model of collaboration and will provide a one-stop shop for policy makers, public health agencies, regulators and funders of research into pathogens with epidemic potential. It will do this by mounting interepidemic (‘peace time’) patient oriented clinical trials in children and in adults, investigations of the pathogenesis of relevant infectious diseases and facilitate the development of sophisticated state-of-the-art near-patient diagnostics. We will develop pre-emptive solutions to ethical, administrative, regulatory and logistical bottlenecks that prevent a rapid response in the face of new threats. We will provide education and training not only to the members of the network, but also to external opinion leaders, funders and policy makers thereby streamlining our future response. By strengthening and integrating interepidemic research networks, PREPARE will enable the rapid coordinated deployment of Europe’s elite clinical investigators, resulting in a highly effective response to future outbreaks based on solid scientific advances.