EUROPEAN AIDS TREATMENT GROUP EV

Their core work

EATG is a European patient advocacy organization that represents people living with HIV/AIDS and co-infections in research and medicines development. They bring the patient perspective into clinical trial design, health technology assessment, and regulatory processes. Their core contribution to EU projects is ensuring that research remains patient-centred — they co-design studies, advocate for meaningful patient engagement, and help translate complex scientific outputs into real-world treatment improvements. They also work on mHealth tools and digital health solutions that empower patients to participate actively in their own care.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

EATG's early H2020 work (2015–2018) was firmly rooted in HIV-specific research — vaccine development, functional cure strategies, and mHealth tools for people living with HIV. From 2018 onward, their focus broadened significantly toward systemic patient engagement: designing better clinical trial platforms, ensuring data governance includes patient voices, and embedding patient-centredness across multiple disease areas including depression, tuberculosis, and rare diseases. This evolution shows a deliberate shift from disease-specific advocacy to becoming a cross-disease patient representation organisation in European research infrastructure.

EATG is expanding beyond HIV into broader personalised medicine and clinical trial reform, positioning itself as a go-to patient voice for any therapeutic area requiring meaningful patient involvement.

How they like to work

EATG never coordinates projects — they join as participants or third parties, which is consistent with their role as a patient advocacy voice rather than a research lead. They work in large consortia (151 unique partners across 29 countries), bringing their patient perspective into multi-partner initiatives. Their value to a consortium is not technical execution but legitimacy and patient-centredness, making them a sought-after partner for IMI and large-scale RIA projects that require genuine patient representation.

EATG has collaborated with 151 unique partners across 29 countries, giving them one of the broadest networks in the patient advocacy space. Their connections span academic institutions, pharma companies (via IMI projects), hospitals, and other patient organisations across nearly all EU member states.

What sets them apart

EATG occupies a rare niche: they are one of very few European patient organisations with deep, sustained involvement in both HIV-specific research and broader medicines development reform. Their dual track — disease-specific expertise plus methodological know-how on patient engagement — makes them uniquely valuable for consortia that need credible patient representation backed by years of regulatory and clinical trial experience. For any project requiring patient involvement as a genuine work package (not just a checkbox), EATG brings both the networks and the institutional knowledge to make it meaningful.

Highlights from their portfolio

• EmERGE
  Largest EATG project (EUR 483K) combining mHealth innovation with HIV patient empowerment — their most hands-on technical contribution.
• EU-PEARL
  Ambitious platform trial initiative covering multiple diseases (depression, TB, rare diseases), showing EATG's expansion well beyond HIV into cross-disease clinical trial reform.
• PARADIGM
  Directly addressed how to make patient involvement in medicines development meaningful rather than tokenistic — a meta-level project about improving the research system itself.