Network Medicine is a new discipline destined to radically change our approach to biology and disease from an integrated perspective (hence the concept of network) and thus to change the face of medicine as we have known it for over a century.

Sapienza University of Rome embraces these changes, particularly through the interdepartmental research centre S.T.I.T.C.H. - Sapienza Information-Based Technology InnovaTion Center for Health - which also researches Big Data Analysis, Network Analysis and Network Medicine.

In September 2018, S.T.I.T.C.H. was the promoter of the first international conference on Network Medicine and Big Data, a historic event for the subject. As a result, Sapienza established a solid collaboration with Harvard Medical School and, in particular, with Joseph Loscalzo, recognised as one of the leading experts in the field and a pioneer of the modern "transformation of medicine". In 2019, our University awarded Loscalzo an honorary doctorate in Innovative Biomedical Technologies in Clinical Medicine in recognition of his studies in the field of Network Medicine.

The second international conference on Network Medicine and Big Data was held online last week at Harvard. Loscalzo dedicated part of his opening speech to presenting the outcomes of a new study on Network Medicine, developed in collaboration with Sapienza University and, in particular, with Paola Paci and Lorenzo Farina of the Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering of Sapienza University of Rome.

The paper, published last January in the journal Nature Systems Biology and Applications (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41540-020-00168-0), defined, for the first time, some of the key features for understanding and treating diseases on a consistent molecular basis.

The international conferences aim to identify a common strategy to implement studies that employ Network Medicine as a scientific method of analysing biological phenomena: this innovative approach to diseases based on the network concept could innovate the study and practice of medicine.