With Colorectal Cancer (CRC) being accountable for 12.4% of all deaths due to cancer, and with only 14% of EU citizens participating in screening programmes, there is an urgent need for accurate, non-invasive, cost-effective screening tests based on novel technologies and an increased awareness on the disease and its detection. Furthermore, personalized approaches for screening are needed, to consider genetic and other socioeconomic variables and environmental stressors that lead to different onsets of the disease. ONCOSCREEN responds to these challenges by developing a risk-based, population-level stratification methodology for CRC, to account for genetic prevalence, socio-economic status, and other factors. It complements this methodology by a) developing a set of novel, practical, and low-cost screening technologies with high sensitivity and specificity, b) leveraging AI to improve existing methodologies for CRC screening, allowing for the early detection of polyps and provision of a personalized risk status stratification, and c) providing a mobile app for self-monitoring and CRC awareness raising. Furthermore, ONCOSCREEN develops an Intelligent Analytics dashboard for policy makers facilitating effective policy making at regional and national levels. Through a multi-level campaign, the above-mentioned solutions are tested and validated. For the clinical solutions specifically, a clinical validation study has been planned with the participation of 4100 enrolled patients/citizens. To ensure the adoption of the developed solutions by the healthcare systems, their cost-effectiveness and financial viability will be assessed. The 48-months duration project will be implemented by a multidisciplinary consortium comprising of 38 partners, including technical solutions providers, hospitals, Ministries of Health as policy makers, legal and ethics experts, Insurance companies, involving actively end-users/citizens in all phases of implementation through targeted workshops. This action is part of the Cancer Mission cluster of projects on ‘Prevention, including Screening.

X-eHealth’s project stands herein for a project of strategic relevance for tomorrow’s European eHealth Union. Assembling at the time of this proposal submission a shared commitment of 47 health actors, the underlying idea of this project is to develop the basis for a workable, interoperable, secure and cross border Electronic Health Record exchange Format in order to lay the foundation for the advance of eHealth sector while using the 3 pillars put forward by the EC as reference. Aimed at promoting a faster and sustainable EU digital transformation, this Cooperative and Support Action is made up of 8 Work Package in which 4 exclusively focus on technical-functional activities (WP4 to WP7). From Generic Aspects to System Architecture and Integration, passing by Functional and Technical Specifications, X-eHealth objective is to move towards a uniform interoperable data-sharing format framework. In addition, to enhance EU’s public health state of play, WP1 and WP8 are responsible for implementation studies, practicality and continuity of eHealth interoperability development. On this basis and building upon the already in place Patient Summary, X-eHealth purpose is to develop the foundations for a common framework for medical imaging, discharge letters, laboratory results and rare diseases to flow both alongside citizens care pathway and across health entities between EU Member States and Neighbour Countries. Focus on cross-border services, this consortium aims to advance an interoperable Common European Health Data Space for citizens and health providers engagement in accordance with privacy and cybersecurity regulations. To achieve this end, X-eHealth gathers 36 consortium partners plus 5 collaborative partners and 6 eHealth skilled experts, eager to develop the abovementioned 4 domains, and distinguished by policy and political actors mixed with national competent authorities to indeed concretely plan, implement and maintain national eHealth infrastructures.

Ovarian cancer (OC) is the most lethal of female cancers, often termed a “silent killer”. DISARM’s overall approach to tackle the significant gaps in hereditary OC management lies in tackling both key elements of risk assessment and early detection. The project will investigate multifactorial risk assessment versus standard practices in 4 EU Member States (MS) (Lithuania, Portugal, Czech Republic, and Greece), and will upscale and validate a set of easy-to-use, highly accurate and affordable technologies in five countries (UK, Lithuania, Portugal, Czech Republic, and Greece). Several intelligent digital assets will optimally support and enhance our clinical studies, while a range of multifaceted activities will ensure the future uptake and adoption of DISARM solutions. The project aligns with the Innovation Action character of this topic by focusing on both mature technologies that can be upscaled in routine healthcare and on emerging technologies that have already shown a potential to justify larger scale validation activities. Our ultimate ambition is to holistically investigate the preconditions and set the stage for rolling out proven solutions in routine OC risk assessment, and in parallel to create further evidence for the introduction of novel promising elements in early detection programmes. DISARM gathers 26 partners from 12 countries (10 EU MS, the UK and Canada), thereby exhibiting a significant geographic coverage, strengthening European and international collaboration and ensuring widespread diffusion of the project results. This action is part of the Cancer Mission cluster of projects on ‘Prevention and Early Detection (early detection heritable cancers)

A structured European mechanism for COVID-19 exchange to organize and share information between countries is urgently needed, especially in the area of population health. Information on the broader impacts of COVID-19 on the health of populations is needed to facilitate multidisciplinary European research and underpin decision making. PHIRI aims to facilitate and support open, interconnected, and data-driven research through the sharing of cross-country COVID-19 population health information and exchange of best practices related to data collection, curation, processing, use and reuse following ELSI and FAIR principles. It has the objective: to provide a Health Information portal for COVID-19 with FAIR catalogues on health and health care data, to provide structured exchange between countries on COVID-19 best practices and expertise, and to promote interoperability and tackle health information inequalities. To this end, it builds with national nodes a Health Information portal (WP4) on data sources, population health studies, training material and courses, considering ethical and legal aspects. The portal is supported by WP7 that provides the technological substrate for the development of a federated research infrastructure. WP5 develops a consolidated framework to assess the direct and indirect impacts of COVID-19 on population wellbeing, morbidity and mortality. WP6 will look at COVID-19 impacts in specific subgroups by conducting research through use cases of immediate relevance and facilitates research by making scalable, reproducible methods available within PHIRI. WP8, the Rapid Exchange Forum, provides swift responses to research and policy questions that are raised in countries to handle the COVID-19 pandemic. WP9 gains insights in possible future health impacts of the coronavirus outbreak by modelling scenarios for national situations. This will be carried out in close collaboration with different types of actors and initiatives across Europe (WP3).

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.