The aim of I(eye)-Screen is to develop an artificial intelligence (AI)-based diagnostic decision support system for screening and monitoring of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) at an early stage before vision loss occurs. Late AMD is the leading cause of legal blindness >50 years with 110 mio individuals at risk. The multidisciplinary consortium brings together a network of clinical retina experts, computer scientists working at the cutting edge of AI development, an infrastructure of community-based opticians/optometrists and an SME experienced in digital platform performance to develop innovative and trustworthy AI tools for broad, real-time AMD screening and monitoring via a cloud-based infrastructure with unlimited access. To achieve the ambitious goal of finding “the needle in the haystack” in early AMD, Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT), a high-resolution, effortless imaging modality is used providing a detailed characterization of the retina in extensive volumetric scans. Breakthrough AI approaches for medical imaging will be developed to enable data-efficient and robust learning from sparse longitudinal OCT data to systematically analyse dense data volumes and identify (sub)clinical markers of disease activity. Clinical sites throughout Europe will collect a longitudinal cohort serving for calibrating and fine-tuning algorithms using the high-end OCT device available at eye clinics. Innovative AI technology will then be created to transfer the detection and monitoring tools to low-cost devices used in next door opticians’/optometrists’ offices. The timing of the project perfectly fits the recent regulatory approval of the first therapy to halt progression of the major atrophic type of AMD. The resulting AI-based “shared care” strategy offers unrestricted accessibility to vision-maintaining care with greatest health equity and provides a role model for screening for systemic, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative disease reflecting retinal biomarkers.

The iodine status is a primary determinant of thyroid disorders, which are a major cause of morbidity, particularly in women. In addition, even mild-to-moderate iodine deficiency during pregnancy is related to neurocognitive impairment in the offspring. Iodine deficiency imposes tremendous costs on the health-care systems of affected regions, but can easily be prevented by iodine fortification programmes. In many countries, iodine deficiency receives surprisingly little publicity. The initial EUthyroid consortium evaluated European prevention programmes against iodine deficiency and uncovered major limitations including the low awareness on the importance of iodine for healthy living. EUthyroid2 will now fill important gaps in the prevention of iodine deficiency in Europe and beyond. The main objective of EUthyroid2 is to improve the low awareness with respect to iodine deficiency-related risks in adolescents and young women. The major aim is to find best practice models for accessing and informing them to increase their awareness and to improve their iodine status in order to lay the foundation for their own thyroid and general health and that of their offspring. Implementation studies and community-based randomised-controlled trials will be conducted with the objective of increasing iodine-related awareness in adolescents and young women up to age of 24 before pregnancy. The interventions are multimodal and performed in the two settings educational system and ambulatory care in eight study regions. As public health project EUthyroid2 is not only science, but will also serve our societies. Therefore, dissemination of findings to various sectors of our countries and the EU will be of utmost importance. By finding best practice models to raise the awareness on the importance of iodine for a healthy life of their own and their offspring in young people, EUthyroid2 will lay the foundation for a cost-effective way to eradicate iodine deficiency-related disorders.

IMPROVE will use Patient Generated Health Data (PGHD) gathered via m-health and e-health technologies to gain improved insights into the real-life behavior of, and challenges faced by, patients of all ages with complex, chronic diseases and comorbidities. Already today, a wealth of patient and citizen information is available, but fragmented, and therefore not coming to its full utility and value. These personal data will complement and improve existing approaches for Patient-Centered Outcome Measures beyond those currently available in state-of-the-art platforms. The IMPROVE platform that the consortium will build will enable the smart use of patient input and patient generated evidence to 1) advance the role of patient preference and patient experience in the context of treatment selection, 2) improve medical device design based on patient preferences and experiences, and 3) facilitate faster market entry of patient-centric and cost-effective advanced integrated care solutions. Improved clinical adoption of Value Based Health Care, and enhanced return on research and innovation investments will be demonstrated in different care settings across the EU, for 10 use cases in at least 5 different disease areas (e.g., ophthalmology, oncology, cardiovascular disease, chronic inflammation, and neurology). The use cases will be conducted using a large variety of implementation strategies, building on a design thinking approach, to optimally test the innovative framework of data gathering and translation into controlled change and action. In addition, a significant contribution from implementation science is planned to reach out to all stakeholders that are relevant for this initiative and maximise the impact to IMPROVE healthcare provision.

Cancer is the first leading cause of death by non-communicable diseases in children in Europe. During cancer treatment, patients’ morbidity is increased due to physical inactivity, cancer-related fatigue (CRF) and reduced health-related quality of life (HRQoL). Adapted exercise training in cancer patients, called exercise oncology, is an increasingly recognised, promising health care intervention. In adults, exercise oncology revealed notable effects on tolerance and completion rate of cancer treatment. However, in childhood cancer patients, strong evidence for exercise efficiency is lacking. Thus, precision exercise training is not part of standard care in paediatric oncology and does not reach the majority of patients. By pooling the leading expertise on a European and cross-Atlantic level, the FORTEe project aims to evaluate a personalised and standardised exercise intervention for children and adolescents undergoing anti-cancer treatment. In the randomised, controlled FORTEe trial, high evidence for an innovative, patient-centred exercise treatment will be generated. FORTEe promotes exercise oncology that aims at making patients “stronger to fight childhood cancer”. Supervised exercise training intents to increase muscle strength and reduce muscular atrophy due to bedrest. CRF and HRQoL can be improved and in the future, these benefits may help to fight childhood cancer by increasing therapy efficiency and survival rate. Within the project, digital, innovative technologies such as augmented reality will be developed and applied to make the exercise training more effective, age-adapted and personalised. Moreover, FORTEe will stimulate translational research to provide access to paediatric exercise oncology as a new health care intervention. As a progress beyond the current state-of-the-art, FORTEe has the ambition to implement paediatric exercise oncology as an evidence-based standard in clinical care for all childhood cancer patients across the EU and beyond.

Within only six months, over 7.4 million people have been diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2. In the most severely hit countries, more than 10% of infected patients have received treatment in Intensive Care Units (ICUs). Insufficient data and limited knowledge on the disease as well as the lack of tools to support the intensivist in making accurate, timely and informed decisions has led to high mortality rates. Continuous surveillance, the collection and intelligent analysis of data from many sources, including ventilators and electrical impedance tomography, would allow intensivists to decide on the best suitable treatment to accelerate the recovery of the often comorbid COVID-19 patients, while reducing the burden on clinical staff and healthcare costs. This information would also increase our understanding of the yet unknown course of disease, supporting other stakeholders in the quest for new therapies. In ENVISION, our multidsciplinary public-private consortium will advance an innovative digital tool, Sandman.MD, a real-time and plug-and-play monitoring app, to an intelligent decision-support system for monitoring, prediction and treatment of COVID-19 patients in ICUs – the Sandman.ICU – reaching Technology Readiness Level 9 and ready for CE marking by the end of the project. The app has been developed by our SME partner app@work and successfully introduced by several hospitals in Germany for use during the perioperative period. Sandman.ICU will be integrated into an AI-driven data analytics suite with predictive modelling tools and enhanced with a smart alert functionality. The digital tool will be validated and demonstrated in 14 hospitals across Europe. Our Health Technology Assessment expert partner will demonstrate the economic and societal value of Sandman.ICU, while an experienced SME will manage the innovation process in view of an immediate market uptake. The rollout will be supported by the European Society of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care.