Search

Asthma affects 30million people in Europe throughout their education and working lives and puts a heavy cost on EU productivity. Preventing and ultimately curing asthma requires co-ordinated research and innovation across Europe. The European Asthma Research and Innovation Partnership (EARIP) is an FP7-funded programme which will take a co-ordinated and integrated approach to the future of research and development by creating a roadmap that describes what is needed to reduce asthma9s impact on individuals and healthcare systems in Europe. The first step in this process was to understand the importance people with asthma place on various research topics; this can indicate which topics are likely to achieve the greatest impact. Respondents were asked to indicate the importance of 51 research topics across 5 research themes via an online survey. The survey was open for 4 weeks in July 2014 and promoted in 8 languages to a network of >160 patient organisations in Europe. Data were reported using descriptive statistics, and comparisons by theme and demographics analysed. 1904 surveys from 20 European countries were analysed: >97% of respondents expressed an opinion on each topic, with the majority viewed as important or very important (>90%). Differences could be seen between topics in different research themes, and comparisons between respondent demographics yielded important results. People with asthma view all research areas as important to their care; however some have greater importance. These findings will inform a stakeholder consensus workshop at ERS 2016 and input into the roadmap. This will be used by clinicians, researchers, industry and patient groups to lobby for change and EU investment in asthma.