On 15th December the Board of Member States of ERNs voted to approve all 23 ERN proposals submitted under the first wave (the 24th proposal, submitted under the 2nd call, will be assessed early in 2017).

European Reference Networks are networks connecting expert centres in the field of rare diseases and specialised healthcare, organised across borders. This concept has been developing and maturing over the past five years and represents a major innovation in care for Europe’s 30 million rare disease patients: although pan-European structures exist in the research domain, this is the first such enterprise in the health sphere. The Networks will create governance structures for knowledge sharing and care coordination across the EU to improve access to diagnosis and treatment, as well as high-quality healthcare provision. ERNs have been organised around broad disease groups, to ensure that no patient with a rare disease is left ‘without a home’ under an ERN.
This is a major innovation for rare diseases in Europe, involving 370 hospitals and almost 1000 highly specialised units across 26 Countries (25 EU Member States + Norway).

The full list of approved ERN applications is available via the official European Commission webpage