Research on Personalized Medicine (PerMed) is a top priority for the European Union (EU) as a strategy aimed at delivering personalised health and care solutions to benefit citizens. In order to strengthen the global efforts on Personalized Medicine and the cooperation of Europe (EU) with Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries , the EULAC PerMed project, funded by the Horizon 2020 Programme of the European Commission, has been launched in January 2019. A unique bi-regional consortium of governmental and funding organisations, with the support of leading stakeholders as associated partners, will be in charge of developing the project until December 2021.

As already stated by the European Council (2015/C 421/03), there is no commonly agreed definition of the term ‘personalised medicine’. However, it is widely understood that personalised medicine refers to a medical model using characterisation of individuals’ phenotypes and genotypes (e.g. molecular profiling, medical imaging, lifestyle data) for tailoring the right therapeutic strategy for the right person at the right time, and/or to determine the predisposition to disease and/or to deliver timely and targeted prevention. Personalised medicine relates to the broader concept of patient-centred care, which takes into account that, in general, healthcare systems need to better respond to patient needs. A frequently synonym used for ‘personalised medicine, is ‘precision medicine’, but sometimes other terms as ‘individualised medicine’, ‘personalised precision medicine’, etc., are also used.

EULAC PerMed has the ambition to engage LAC countries in the International Consortium on Personalized Medicine (ICPerMed) and in the ERANet ERAPerMed with the aim at advancing in the implementation of the Action Plan of ICPerMed.

The International Consortium on Personalized Medicine (ICPerMed) was formally established in 2016, with the support of the European Commission. It is a voluntary, EU Member States‐led collaboration between funders of health research, research policy makers, and health policy makers that aims to coordinate research and health policy to advance the implementation of PerMed.

ERA PerMed is a new ERA-Net Cofund, supported by 32 partners from 23 countries and cofunded by the European Commission. To align national research strategies, promote excellence, reinforce the competitiveness of European players in PM, and enhance the European collaboration with non-EU countries, national funding organisations have agreed to launch Joint Transnational Calls for collaborative innovative research projects in Personalised Medicine (PM).