Integrating AI in Stroke Neurorehabilitation

Coordinated by Prof. Paul Verschure, STICHTING RADBOUD UNIVERSITEIT (NL), project management by tp21.
Duration: 4 years, starting 1 December 2022 - Total funding: approximately € 7.8 million.

 

Vision...

 

Health services are increasingly moving towards a treatment continuum aligned with the patient journey. This transition will critically depend on the successful deployment of trustworthy AI-enhanced technologies that are accurate, secure, and trusted. The AISN project will develop and validate operating procedures and guidelines for integrating AI in a healthcare continuum, focussing on post-stroke rehabilitation. AISN delivers a representative AI health platform built from integrating validated platforms for data acquisition and access, clinical interpretation, whole-brain simulation, clinically validated intervention delivery and optimization and model-based prediction. The AISN integrated platform will be validated in the clinical context of rehabilitation in the outpatient and at-home phase and facilitate a concrete assessment of the fundamental ways in which AI-enhanced clinical decision-support will change the care pathway and the formulation of novel AI compatible treatment guidelines. AISN ensures an ethical approach by developing legal and ethical guidelines for the robust, fair, and trustworthy deployment of AI in health and validating acceptance and transparency of its solutions. Building on the AISN platform, the project will test current standard operating procedures for integrating AI in health care and formulate and validate new ones where needed. The AISN guidelines and procedures will emphasize the evidence base and safety of clinical interventions, transparency, prognostics at varying time-scales, personalization of interventions, access to disease-specific information by clinicians, patients and their carers, and assure that the potential of AI is fully developed in the service of value-based medicine satisfying standards of security and safety. We will go beyond currently available guidelines and frameworks by emphasizing explainability, AI tools with evolving performance, and the dynamic interaction between users and algorithms.

More soon

 

Counterfactual Assessment and Valuation for Awareness Architecture

Coordinated by Prof. Paul Verschure, STICHTING RADBOUD UNIVERSITEIT (NL), project management by tp21.
Duration: 4 years, starting 1 October 2022 - Total funding: approximately € 3.1 million.

Vision

 

The Counterfactual Assessment and Valuation for Awareness Architecture (CAVAA) project proposes that awareness serves survival in a world governed by hidden states, to deal with the “invisible”, from unexplored environments to social interaction that depends on the internal states of agents and moral norms. Awareness reflects a virtual world, a hybrid of perceptual evidence, memory states, and inferred “unobservables”, extended in space and time. The CAVAA project will realize a theory of awareness instantiated as an integrated computational architecture and its components to explain awareness in biological systems and engineer it in technological ones. It will realize underlying computational components of perception, memory, virtualization, simulation, and integration, embody the architecture in robots and artificial agents, validate it across a range of use-cases involving the interaction between multiple humans and artificial agents, using accepted measures and behavioural correlates of awareness. Use cases will address robot foraging, social robotics, computer game benchmarks and human-generated decision trees in a health coach. These benchmarks will focus on resolving trade-offs, e.g. between search efficiency and robustness, and assess the acceptance of human users of aware technology. CAVAA’s awareness engineering is accompanied by an ethics framework towards human users and aware artefacts in the broader spectrum of trustworthy AI, considering shared ontologies, intention complementarity, and behavioural matching, an empathy, relevance of outcomes, reciprocity, counterfactuals and projections towards new future scenarios, and to predict the impact of choices. CAVAA will deliver a better user experience because of its explainability, adaptability, and legibility. CAVAA’s integrated framework redefines how we look at the relationship between humans, other species and smart technologies because it makes the invisible visible.

 

 

More soon

 

Implementing a patient-centred and evidence-based intervention to reduce
BEnzodiazepine and sedative-hypnotic use to improve patient SAFEty and quality of care

Vision

Benzodiazepine and sedative hypnotics (BSHs) incur significant adverse effects and costs, especially in older adults.
Addressing BSH overuse in older adults is therefore an urgent priority to improve patient safety in Europe. However,
previous attempts did not lead to large-scale reduction in use.
The goal of BE-SAFE is to improve patient safety by addressing knowledge and practice gaps related to the reduction
of BSHs used for sleep difficulties in Europe.

Coordinated by Prof. Anne Spinewine, Université Catholique de Louvain, (BE), project management by tp21.
Duration: 5 years, starting 1 September 2022 - Total funding: approximately € 5.7 million.

 

More soon

 

eBRAIN-Health - Actionable Multilevel Health Data
Coordinated by Prof. Petra Ritter, CHARITE, project management by tp21.
Duration: 4 years, starting 1 July 2022 - Total funding: approximately € 13 million.

Vision

The project aims to develop a decentralized, data protection-compliant research platform capable of simulating some of the brain’s complex neurobiological phenomena. As part of the project, researchers will collate an array of different types of information, including data from PET and MRI scans, EEG tests, behavioral studies and lifestyle surveys, as well as clinical data from thousands of patients and healthy controls. These will be combined with biological information from knowledge databases and made available for research purposes. The resultant digital ‘brain twins’ will enable large numbers of researchers to conduct innovative research within a powerful digital infrastructure.

Thanks to its transparent analytical pipelines, the new research infrastructure will also help to promote reproducible research.

Furthermore, complex, personalized brain simulations which take into account large quantities of data may be able to provide a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying brain function and disorders. Virtual brain modeling may also improve diagnostics and disease prediction, in addition to enabling the optimization of treatment plans. The project consortium comprises 20 partners and operates in cooperation with EBRAINS AISBL, the coordinating entity of the EU-funded flagship ‘Human Brain Project’.

This year’s WBD will be devoted to brain health for all. The goals are: Awareness - Prevention - Advocacy - Education - Access;
VIDEOS  and more >>here

The next World Cancer Congress (WCC) will be held in Geneva, Switzerland from 17 to 20 October 2022,

a combination of on-site events with virtual elements such as webinars, podcasts and online presentations.

How to contribute to the programme?

Whether you are an experienced oncologist, a dedicated cancer researcher, an inspirational caregiver, a committed volunteer representing a patient support group, an employee of a cancer society, a fundraiser or the General Director of a hospital, get involved by contributing to one of the programme features and get ready to stand in the spotlight of the World Cancer Congress.

Sessions - Abstracts - Cinema - Awards - Spotlight Stage --> more here

ENDOSCAPE will overcome a longstanding and major bottleneck in the field of gene delivery,
namely efficient, safe and cost-effective transfer of gene therapeutic products  into the cytosol.

Go to Registration

see Topics and Speakers

 

  • Gene Therapy – Where We Stand Today
  • Endosomal Escape – The Strategies
  • Carriers of Endosomal Escape Enhancers and Genes
  • Endosomal Escape – What Happens?
  • GMP Production and Market
  • Gene Therapy – Animal Experiments and Clinical Applications
  • Poster sessions

Confirmed Speakers

  • Christine Dufès, University of Strathclyde Glasgow
  • Kazunori Kataoka, The University of Tokyo
  • Fulvio Mavilio, Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia
  • Luigi Naldini, Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele Milano
  • Jean-Philippe Pellois, Texas A&M University
  • Pål Kristian Selbo, Oslo University Hospital
  • Vladimir P. Torchilin, Northeastern Univerity Boston
  • Jan van Hest, Eindhoven University of Technology
  • Ernst Wagner, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
  • Inge Zuhorn, University Medical Center Groningen

The SYMPOSIUM is planned to be an onsite event at Berlin.
More details soon on the ENDOSCAPE website.

Please have a look at the >>ENDOSCAPE Video

The topic will be Recruitment in Clinical Trials.
ICTD 2022 will take place 17 May 2022 in Berlin, Langenbeck-Virchow-Haus.

Registration is mandatory.  Details >> here.

Tech Day brings together teams of experts from across the European Patent Office to explore a technological theme of special significance.

The theme of Tech Day 2022 is technologies of transformation: those technologies developed in response to the most pressing global crises of our time with a view to sustaining planetary health - both human health and the health of our planet.

Please note that registration is required for this free event.

More >> here

New European initiative will build a collaborative platform for data and sample sharing, to accelerate the discovery and validation of biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD).

  • EPND will become a future European infrastructure, facilitating access to biological samples and data to accelerate biomarker discovery and validation and eventually support the development of therapeutics for neurodegenerative diseases.

For more please visit www.epnd.org

 

  • The European Platform for Neurodegenerative Diseases (EPND) integrates existing initiatives to build, grow, and deliver a scalable and self-sustainable platform for storage and analysis of high-quality clinical samples and data collections.
  • EPND is a public-private partnership funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), a Joint Undertaking between the EU and European pharmaceutical industries that supports projects at the vanguard of health research.

EPND will bring together 29 partners from the public and private sectors and will be managed by two public partners, University of Maastricht and University of Leicester, and two private partners, Gates Ventures and UCB Biopharma. EPND will leverage and connect existing European research infrastructures, including BBMRI, EATRIS, ELIXIR and EBRAINS.

22.-27. January 2022

BiOS

The most important biomedical optics conference in the field

more here >>

29 Nov - 01 Dec 2021

This event will provide essentials and timely information about global clinical trial disclosure, data transparency, data sharing for secondary research and updates on the EU Clinical Trial Information System (CTIS) and how Brexit is impacting the disclosure ecosystem.

Featured topics:

>>

  • Strategic Aspects of Disclosure and Transparency Beyond Compliance
  • UK Disclosure Requirements Updates’
  • Patients’ Perspectives around Disclosure
  • Considerations on Increased Transparency, Data Privacy and Data Sharing
  • Disclosure Requirements in Medical Device Studies
  • Non-Interventional studies
  • Academia’s Challenges in Clinical Trial Disclosure – Bridging the Gap
  • Global Collaboration Initiatives and the Benefits for Transparency & Disclosure
  • Lay Summaries are coming!
  • Public Demonstration of EU CTIS
  • EU Clinical Trial Regulation: Joint Collaboration within Industry Organisation

more here >>

European Patent Office online conference for patent search professionals, 6-8 October 2021.
>>Recorded sessions. The focus was on medical technologies, one of the fastest paced areas of innovation and patent filing in Europe. They accounted for over 14 000 applications at the EPO in 2020 – around 7% of all filings and an increase of 2.6% on 2019.

  more here >>

 

HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01-06
Research and Innovation Action

Expected Outcomes

  • researchers, healthcare professionals, cancer patients and survivors contributing to cancer research regularly interact with EOSC to store, share, access, analyse and process research data and other research digital objects from their own discipline, across disciplines and national borders;
    ....more below

  • open and FAIR data are the new norm for research conducted under this mission area;
  • EU-wide sharing of research data relevant to this area is shown to be a critical mechanism to facilitate cancer research across Member States and Associated Countries;
  • contribute to guaranteeing safety of patients’ data while at the same time contributing to research advancement. Engaging with patients/survivors in the sharing, access and use of data;
  • EOSC grows into a trusted research and innovation data space and service platform in Europe that supports the interdisciplinary community involved in this mission area;
  • contribute to the Horizon Europe EOSC Partnership and other relevant partnerships related to cancer research.

    more here

 

 

Call for tenders “Service contract for the provision of joint Health Technology Assessment (HTA) work supporting the continuation of EU cooperation on HTA”

The subject of this call for tenders is to address methodological issues to foster joint HTA work supporting EU cooperation on HTA beyond May 2021 (when the EU co-funded EUnetHTA Joint Action 3 ends), thus providing relevant  input to a potential new legal framework on HTA.

more >> here

 

 

 

The new Horizon Europe 2021-2022 work programs are now published.

First calls are open.

All work programs are available on the Funding and Tenders Portal under "Reference Documents".

tp21 supports application set-up and project management.

-

 


June 11 2021, 13:30 - 17:45 CET

Photoacoustic Mammoscopy for evaluating screening-detected lesions in the breast

Concept and latest results will be presented.   Program and Registration here

 

The Digital Europe Programme (DIGITAL) is a new EU funding programme focused on bringing digital technology to businesses, citizens and public administrations.
A planned overall budget of € 7.5 billion will support projects in five key capacity areas:

supercomputing | artificial intelligence | cybersecurity | advanced digital skills | ensuring a wide use of digital technologies across the economy, society, including through Digital Innovation Hubs.

How to get funding? More here  

“Implementing an inclusive European Open Science Cloud”

Slides and Recordings available >> here

TVB-Cloud is a project of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).

 

 

 

 

The European Commission mobilises €123 million for research and innovation to combat the threat of variants.

Two calls are published

tp21 supports application set-up and project management.

ERC starts with the first work programme under Horizon Europe, Europe’s new Framework Programme for Research and Innovation for 2021-2027.

ERC supports investigator-driven frontier research across all fields, on the basis of scientific excellence.

The call calendar, deadlines and the work programme for download >> here

 

 

 

 

 

Joint transnational call “Addressing adverse and beneficial effects of food ingredients and food processing on hypersensitivities to food.

The aim of this call is to address how food ingredients and food processing methods could favour or prevent the occurrence of food intolerances and allergies in society.

more >> here

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The publication of the work programme and the first calls is expected in April 2021.

Find more about the HORIZON Europe clusters and missions >> here.

HORIZON Europe fact sheet

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Virtual Brain Cloud project is  partner in the European Open Science Cloud initiative.

Short video explaining the Virtual Brain Cloud - a GDPR compliant health data platform for the personalized prevention and treatment of dementia.

more >> here

 

 

 

The European Commission has decided to launch a €1 billion call for research and innovation projects that respond to the climate crisis and help protect Europe's unique ecosystems and biodiversity.

Find here details on the Horizon 2020-funded >> European Green Deal Call.

Specific open calls >> here

 

 

 

Achieving Gender Diversity

European Training Network G-VERSITY joins 8 leading European research groups from psychology, education, management, business administration, media and communication studies.

More here

 

 

 

tp21 supports the MANIFESTO initiative:

MAXIMISING the accessibility of research results in the fight against Covid-19.

More details about >> MANIFESTO

 

 

 

Call for projects on low-carbon technologies and processes

deadlines in 2020 and 2021

 

see more << here

 

 

 

The ERA corona platform is one of the 10 priorities of the European Commission and national ministries agreed on the first ERAvsCorona action plan.

 

visit the
European Research Area (ERA) corona platform

 

Answers on questions such as

  • fulfillment of time / delivery date commitments
  • documentation of working hours during home office
  • project extension
  • review meetings
  • reimbursement of costs for cancelled event

More >> here

The 17 projects, short listed for funding, involve 136 research teams from across the EU and beyond  will work on:

  • Improving epidemiology and public health, including our preparedness and response to outbreaks
  • Rapid point-of-care diagnostic tests
  • New treatments
  • Development of new vaccines

More here >> https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_20_386

 

 

The recent escalation of restrictions related to the COVID-19 outbreak may hamper applicants’ ability to prepare and finalise high-quality proposals.

For this reason, for Horizon 2020 calls with original deadlines between now and 15 April, extensions will be applied. The precise new deadlines for each call and topic will be published on the call and topic pages on the Funding and Tenders Portal.

Horizon Europe will be launched on January 01 2021.

latest news see >> here

or on Twitter  https://twitter.com/hashtag/HorizonEU

IMI call now published: Development of therapeutics and diagnostics combatting coronavirus infections

Scope: Considering that this is a newly-identified virus, the scope of this topic remains broad and must address at least one of the following objectives:

  • development of antivirals as well as other types of therapeutics to address a rapid response to the current COVID-19 outbreak;
  • development of therapeutics to address the current and/or future coronavirus outbreaks;
  • development of diagnostics, ensuring rapid evaluation of candidates based on existing technologies;
  • development of fast and reliable tools that go beyond the state of the art for detection of COVID-19 carriers and symptomatic individuals suspected of COVID-19 infection.

Preventive vaccines are specifically excluded from the scope of the Call.

Indicative budget

  • From EFPIA companies and IMI2 Associated Partners: to be defined based upon selected proposals
  • From the IMI2 JU: EUR 45 000 000
  • Submission deadline: 31 March 2020

For full details of the topic, including the budget breakdown and the General Conditions for the Call for proposals, click on the links above (which take you directly to the relevant page of the Participant Portal) or read the IMI2 - Call 21 Text.

>> Do not hesitate to contact tp21 to be the responsible management partner in your IMI proposal.

The Human Brain Project shows their work at the German Parliament Bundestag. The Virtual Brain is a central part of the exhibition.

Meet Dr. Petra Ritter during the opening event on Nov 27th . Dr. Ritter will also lead a guided tour through the exhibition on Nov 28.

Access to the exhibition is only possible after prior registration via the website.

This exhibition is in partnership with The Human Brain Project, and includes many beautiful exhibits about the brain. You don't want to miss it.

More information about the program >here<.

UK participation in Horizon 2020

The UK and the EU have agreed a flexible extension of the Article 50 period to 31 January 2020. During this period, the UK will remain a member of the EU with all the relevant rights and obligations. This means that UK organisations can continue to participate in Horizon 2020 as a Member State, and remain eligible to apply for Horizon 2020 funding. Read more about deal and no-deal scenarios to ensure continuity of funding here:

UKRO Brexit factsheet>> https://www.ukro.ac.uk/Documents/factsheet_brexit.pdf?pubdate=20191030

GOV.UK >>  https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-participation-in-horizon-2020-uk-government-overview/uk-participation-in-horizon-2020-after-brexit

more ....

>> EU project NISCI

NISCI (Nogo-A Inhibition in acute Spinal Cord Injury)
is a multicenter, multinational, placebo controlled phase-II study for the safety and preliminary efficacy of intrathecal anti-Nogo-A [NG101] in patients with acute cervical spinal cord injury.

The purpose of the NISCI trial is to test if an antibody therapy can improve motor function and quality of life of tetraplegic patients. A previous trial showed this treatment is safe and well accepted. This current trial has been approved by the National Ethics Committee and Ministry of Health for all participating trial sites.

Find NISCI under Clinical Trials.gov

IMI’s next Calls for proposals are currently under discussion and are expected for early 2020.

The list of topics under discussion is given below:

  • Neurodegeneration and other neuroscience priorities
  • Infection control including vaccines
  • Big data, digital health, clinical trials and regulatory research
  • Oncology
  • Facilitating the translation of advanced therapies to patients in Europe

More >> here:   https://www.imi.europa.eu/apply-funding/future-topics

Deadline 07.April 2020, funding 10-20 Mio €

The challenge

The reliability and relevance of animal studies to support chemical safety assessment are subject to increasing scrutiny from a scientific perspective and raises broader societal concerns. To address these challenges, the European Commission has been supporting the development and application of animal-free approaches to toxicological profiling of chemicals in support of chemical safety assessment. However, significant challenges remain regarding the provision of viable animal-free solutions to address systemic health effects in humans potentially linked to chronic exposure to chemicals across a variety of regulated sectors. Consequently, further efforts are needed to progress on the development, validation and translation of scientifically sound methods that not only decrease the reliance on animal testing but which also deliver more relevant, reliable and cost-effective means to facilitate decision-making to support regulation, innovation and competitiveness.

open call for proposals >> here

VirtualBrainCloud, coordinated by P. Ritter, CHARITE, a 15 Mio € EU project, started on Januar 1st 2019.

TVB cloud on Twitter

→ About VirtualBrainCloud

The annual worldwide cost of Alzheimer’s dementia was 777.81 billion Euro in 2015. This number will rise to 7.41 trillion Euro in 2050. Early diagnosis would save up to $7.9 trillion in medical and care costs by 2050 in the US alone. However, the emergent pathology is highly variable across people, necehighly variable across people, necessitating individualized diagnostics and interventions. The VirtualBrainCloud addresses this by bridging the gap between computational neuroscience and subcellular systems biology, integrating both research streams into a unifying computational model that supports personalized diagnostics and treatments in NDD. TheVirtualBrainCloud not only integrates existing software tools, it also merges the efforts of two big EU initiatives, namely The Virtual Brain large scale simulation platform of the EU Flagship Human Brain Project and IMI-EPAD initiative (European prevention of Alzheimer’s dementia consortium). VirtualBrainCloud will develop and validate a decision support system that provides access to high quality multi-disciplinary data for clinical practice. The result will be a cloud-based brain simulation platform to support personalized diagnostics and treatments in NDD. The EU PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe) initiative, will provide the required computing infrastructure. The VirtualBrainCloud will develop robust solutions for legal and ethical matters by interacting with EU projects such as European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), ‘cloud4health’, Alzheimer’s Europe patient organizations and ELIXIR, an organization that manages and safeguards EU research data. Our software developers have already produced highly successful brain simulation and clinical decision support tools. The resulting software will be a cloud based computational modeling system that is tailored to the individual, and bridges multiple scales to identify key mechanisms that predict NDD progression and serves as Precision Decision Support System.

The UK Intellectual Property Office has published a guide concerning the future of intellectual property (IP) rights and the recent Referendum decision on BREXIT.

What are possible consequences on trade marks, designs, patents, copyright and enforcement issues.

More >> here

The European Commission has published its proposal for Horizon Europe, an ambitious €100 billion research and innovation programme that will succeed Horizon 2020.

For the next long-term EU budget 2021-2027, the Commission is proposing €100 billion for research and innovation.

Ending the Pandemic Threat: A Grand Challenge for Universal Influenza Vaccine Development