The healthcare sector is hindered by several barriers that hamper the application of circular economy principles (e.g. the safety restrictions of the domain limit the use of recycled materials due to the need of materials biocompatibility, and safety in products to be used in the human body). Led by a multidisciplinary consortium of 39 partners (plus 13 industry affiliates) from 15 EU countries plus UK and USA, ENKORE aim to tackle challenges and develop an ecoDesign framework that supports the development of safe and environmental compliant devices eco-responsible packaging, which minimize the environmental impact, reduce the carbon footprint, and maximize the use and preservation of resources. The main goal is to connect the design of the medical devices packages with the end-of-life stage, thus the technologies that support circularity are taken into account at the medical device conception stage. ENKORE framework will be validated in 5 Reference Use Cases (RUCs), led by 5 different health regions that bring HPCs and policy maker, 3 large EU hospitals and the reference network for European Regional and Local Health Authorities (EUREGHA). The project developments and RUCs are supported by several associations and NGOs, a packaging manufacturer and a group of SMEs and researchers, specialists in circularity, LCA, social sciences, environment, circularity, and materials. The validation of the framework shall provide evidence to work with policymakers, creating new or revised standards and create tangible/quantitative evidence. Policy making and regulatory engagement will be strongly performed. The methods and tools comprise Environmental and Social Life Cycle Assessment (ELCA/SLCA), Circularity Calculator (CC) and Digital Product Passport (DPP) approaches, which could be adapted during the second stage of the proposal.

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.

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the most common cancer types and its increased occurrence may be attributable to adverse health behaviors, especially in lower socioeconomic status populations. Stemming from the specific risk factors identified with CRC, ONCODIR integrates multidisciplinary research methods from health policy analytics; social and behavioural science; AI-powered multi-omics and retrospective data analytics as well as decision support theories to deliver evidence-based cancer prevention programmes and innovative AI-powered personalised prevention approaches. ONCODIR recognises that the evaluation of the ONCODIR prevention programmes needs to address cost effectiveness, affordability and cost benefit parameters. Thus it will also investigate cost balancing and demand generating financial schemes that will lead to enhanced CRC prevention programmes. The coherent technological ecosystem that ONCODIR is developing is based on robust AI trustworthiness and privacy preserving principles to deploy recommendation services that will be specified by citizens, health policy actors and SSH experts, during three design thinking workshops. SSH research will address aspects such as the life-status, nutritional and social habits in tandem with Economics, Sociology and Local/Regional Cultural identity and Ethics. ONCODIR’s results will be validated in three Laboratory Integration Tests (LITs) and three Large-scale Intervention Pilots (LIPs) in five EU member states, with the active involvement of medical scientists, health care providers, foundations and consortium experts. The ONCODIR consortium is composed of complementary partners, coming from multidisciplinary research, technological and SSH domains, with a proven track record of high-quality research capacity. The carefully structured workplan, embodies a holistic approach toward meeting the ONCODIR objectives and delivering feasible policy-supporting outcomes of significant exploitation potential. This action is part of the Cancer Mission cluster of projects on ‘Prevention and early detection.

The challenge of mitigating advanced cyber attacks through advanced security training has been evident during the last decade in numerous fields and industries in EU. Despite the wide spectrum of such tools appears to provide a comprehensive machinery for detecting and responding effectively to cyber attacks, it is difficult to establish effective tool usage strategies and processes for addressing the ever-expanding land-scape of these attacks. Moreover, the advent of more “intelligent” cybersecurity solutions, which make use of technologies like machine learning, statistical analysis and user behaviour analysis, requires sophisticated and hands-on training of the key personnel of organizations, who have responsibility for security, for the latter to be able to master them. In response to the above, THREAT-ARREST will develop an advanced training platform incorporating emulation, simulation, serious gaming and visualization capabilities to adequately prepare stakeholders with different types of responsibility and levels of expertise in defending high-risk cyber systems and organizations to counter advanced, known and new cyber attacks. The THREAT-ARREST platform will deliver security training, based on a model driven approach where cyber threat and training preparation models, specifying the potential attacks, the security controls of cyber systems against them, and the tools that may be used to assess the effectiveness of these controls, will drive the training process, and align it with operational cyber system security assurance mechanisms to ensure the relevance of training. The platform will also support trainee performance evaluation and training program evaluation and adapt training programs based on them. The effectiveness of the framework will be validated using a prototype implementation at TRL-7 inter-connected with real cyber systems pilots in the area of smart energy, healthcare and shipping, and from technical, legal and business perspectives.