New England Council member Takeda Pharmaceutical has developed a
plan to shorten the time it takes to diagnose rare diseases in children.
Partnering with Microsoft and EUORDIS-Rare Diseases Europe, to support the
Global Commission to End the Diagnostic Odyssey for Children, Takeda has released
a report with three key policies to expedite rare disease diagnoses.
Rare diseases currently take between five and ten years to
diagnose, with 40% of patients receiving at least one misdiagnosis. The Global
Commission focuses on children as most of the 6,000 identified rare diseases
begin in childhood. The solutions developed in this report include giving
families tools to identify seemingly unrelated symptoms, equipping frontline
physicians with better tools and knowledge, and revamping genetic consultations
to standardize the process and include more telemedicine options.
Wolfram Northaft, Chief Medical Officer at Takeda and
Co-Chair of the Global Commission, explained, “Independent of any specific
therapeutic approach is how we as a company want to help the community, and
that means patients and academia and other organizations, in a very holistic
approach.”
The Council praises Takeda’s support for the Global
Commission and for its ongoing efforts to advance medical care in the field of
rare diseases.