In the history of modern medicine, the Framingham project marked the beginning of long-term monitoring projects of a specific community: thanks to the availability of the inhabitants of the town of Massachusetts, in the United States, discoveries were made that have entered current clinical practice , for example the importance of cholesterol in cardiovascular disease. Such a great success that even today, after more than seventy years from its inception, the project continues thanks to the grandchildren of the first members. In Italy Molise is the leader of this type of project with Moli-sani, which for 15 years has been investigating the role of nutrition in the state of health and which to date involves over 24 thousand citizens. The Neuromed Clinical Research Network, which coordinates Moli-sani, has now launched a new project, Plato, which involves hospitalized patients in the Region.
The Plato Project
“The idea behind the project is simple: to transform normal hospitalization and care activities into scientific research data with the large-scale collection of all information relating to patients who for any reason interact with the clinical facilities of the Neuromed Network” , He says Giovanni de Gaetano, president of Neuromed. “Information that, inserted in large databases and analyzed with innovative computer and statistical techniques, will allow to obtain complex scientific results, deriving from real life, impossible to obtain with traditional research methods”.
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Anyone who turns to one of the structures of the Network for a hospitalization, can join the project, without any commitment or any additional examination. “During the diagnostic and therapeutic activity of any patient – he explains Licia Iacoviello, director of the Department of Epidemiology and Prevention and Project Manager, and holder of the chair of Hygiene and Public Health of the University of Insubria in Varese – a lot of information is normally collected and often blood or other tissue samples are taken. It is the usual procedure, linked to the reason why that person went to the clinic ”. When the patient agrees to enter the project, those data and samples are used not only to provide him with the most appropriate performance, but also for scientific research. In particular, the information is entered in the electronic archives of the Plato Project, while the biological samples, which would otherwise be discarded after routine examinations, will be hosted in a special bio-bank, in the Neuromed Biobanking Center, at the Pozzilli headquarters.
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The importance of data
“What we ask of our patients to enter the Plato Project – explains Maria Benedetta Donati, who directs the Neuromed Biobanking Center – is a simple signature on informed consent. In this way they authorize us to enter their clinical and personal data, as well as their biological samples, in the archives and in the bio-bank of the Project ”. Naturally, all the information collected will be used completely anonymously and exclusively for research purposes, with the utmost respect for privacy and under the protection of the most advanced security technologies.
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“For you our care, with you the search for the future”. This is the slogan chosen for the project to underline the contribution of patients to a large scientific study that will help researchers design new prevention and treatment strategies. “The Network – concludes Iacoviello – is the starting point for innovative medical research. Not only because it uses cutting-edge systems and concepts, but above all because it directly involves people, making them feel part of a large scientific family ”.
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