Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
UPM (ES)
UPM is the largest Spanish technological university specialized in all engineering fields and architecture. With two recognitions as Campus of International Excellence, its outstanding research activity together with its highly-qualified professional trainings, make UPM a really competitive university at international level. More than 2.400 researchers carry out their activity at the UPM, grouped in more than 200 Research Groups, 20 Research Centres or Institutes and 55 Laboratories, all of them committed to transform the knowledge generated into innovation advances applied to the productive sector, contributing to solve the challenges of the European citizens.
Life Supporting Technologies (LifeSTech) is a research, development and innovation group, part of Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Its activities are devoted to the design, development and evaluation of ICT based services and applications, for the creation and promotion of new ideas, methods and technological solutions throughout the whole value chain of e- Health, and e-Inclusion related organizations.
Role in BRAINTEASER
Besides coordinating the project, UPM will lead the design and development of the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Multiple Sclerosis patients’ app for monitoring, data acquisition and feedback. The app will provide a set of tools to foster the self-management of the disease using educational contents, and services to improve the adherence to treatment. In addition, UPM will be responsible for implementing the clinical tools to monitor the progresses and assess the patients that use the app. Finally, UPM will contribute to the applicability of the Artificial Intelligence models in the clinical context and in the daily patient’s routine.
Università degli Studi di Padova
UNIPD (IT)
Dating back to 1222, UNIPD is one of Europe’s oldest and most prestigious seats of learning. The University offers its students 32 departments, 37 doctoral degree courses activated this year, 7 international doctoral programmes, 8 Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degrees and 43 research and service centers across the spectrum of sciences, medicine, social sciences and humanities, with more than 2.100 professors and researchers employed. There are about 61 thousand of students, and about 7.5 thousand graduate every year. UNIPD has been managing more than 350 European research projects since the launch of the VII Framework Programme (2007-2014): about 200 were founded within the FP7 framework (total contribution of about € 67 Million) and more than 160 funded within Horizon 2020 (total contribution of more than € 30 Million).
The Department of Information Engineering is one of the biggest UNIPD departments. It is a leading centre for education, research and technological development in the area of electronics, quantum physics, automatic control, photonics, telecommunications, computer science, instrumentation and measurement, operation research and bioengineering.
The importance of the DEI’s research activity is well documented by publications (around 600 in 2019) and patents. At present time, 24 EU projects are active at DEI in the various research areas (3 in the Bioengineering area).
Role in BRAINTEASER
UNIPD, BRAINTEASER technical manager, will develop a signal processing pipeline for enhancing the signals acquired on Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Multiple Sclerosis patients by wearable sensors monitoring their activity/mobility and vital signs. UNIPD will also lead the development of Artificial Intelligence models to predict the risk of progression in the patients and willbe responsible of implementing the project’s Open Science framework. within this framework, UNIPD will organise annual open evaluation challenges to maximise the impact of the project’s results.
FCIÊNCIAS.ID Associação para a Investigação e Desenvolvimento de Ciências – FC.ID (PT)
FCIÊNCIAS.ID – Associação para a Investigação e Desenvolvimento de Ciências (FC.ID) is a non-profit private association, endowed with legal personality. It was created in 2017 as a common initiative of Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa (CIÊNCIAS) – a higher education institution – and 6 private companies, in order to support, potentiate and develop Research and Development and Innovation (R&D) activities of its associates, while simultaneously enhancing CIÊNCIAS strategic partnerships with market and services companies, therefore creating a more challenging environment for research and innovation.
FCiências.ID is the legal representative of 19 SNCT research units, including LASIGE. LASIGE performs R&D in computer science and engineering and is organised in research lines of excellence (RLE), such as the Data and Systems Intelligence RLE, Health & Biomedical Informatics RLE, and Ageing and Accessibility RLE, with senior researchers participating in BRAINTEASER. LASIGE activities represent an added value to the Portuguese and European Science and Technology System, materialised by several factors such as quality and impact of the outputs in research, technology transfer with a prominent international projection and alignment with state-of-the-art international research themes and agendas.
Role in BRAINTEASER
FCIÊNCIAS.ID is leading the project activity targeting Artificial Intelligence models for patient stratification. It further actively participates in all other tasks concerning the development of those models to unravel disease mechanisms, predict disease progression, and suggest interventions that can delay disease progression.
Università degli Studi di Torino
UNITO (IT)
UNITO is one of the largest Italian universities, with about 80.000 students, 3.900 employees, 1.800 post-graduate and post-doctoral research fellows. Research and training are performed in 27 Departments, encompassing all scientific disciplines. With reference to the most recent national evaluation of the Italian university system (VQR 2011-2014), UNITO is ranked in the top three Italian universities in nine scientific areas out of 16. As for internationalization, UNITO is involved in about 600 cooperation agreements with institutions all around the world including joint educational programs at the undergraduate and doctoral levels. UNITO manages roughly 500 projects per year, both at the national and international levels.
Two “excellence” departments are involved in BRAINTEASER. The Department of Neuroscience “Rita Levi Montalcini” (DNS), and the Department of Medical Sciences (DMS). DNS is organised in research groups reflecting the interaction between basic, clinical, and translational research. Its mission is to promote and advance the study of the neurosciences to create a virtuous circle between the public engagement strategy and the correlated social impact of neurosciences. DMS largely covers multidisciplinary research activities, from basic biology to clinical application. All the DSM research areas rely on three core facilities: biobank, genomics and big data analyses, which develops computational tools, mainly based on Artificial Intelligence for biomedical applications.
Role in BRAINTEASER
UNITO, BRAINTEASER ethical manager, will provide to the project relevant Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis data. Moreover, UNITO will address the concept definition and the general guidelines and work on exploiting the sensor-based information to predict Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Multiple Sclerosis disease progression and risk level by coordinating the development of Artificial Intelligence methods for disease monitoring.
Instituto De Medicina Molecular João Lobo Antunes – iMM (PT)
iMM mission is to improve human health through the study of disease mechanisms and the development of novel diagnostic tests and therapeutic approaches. iMM’s 34 research groups are organized in 4 Research Lines: Cellular and Developmental Biology; Immunology and infection; Oncobiology; and Neurosciences. iMM scientific impact is reflected in over 270 peer-reviewed publications in 2019 (20% of these in high impact journals), and shared authorship with groups from 100+ countries worldwide. Significant knowledge transfer efforts have been translated into 22 active patent families, and 8 spin-off companies.
iMM secured a total value of 31M Euros from Horizon 2020, being the second Portuguese Institution in terms of EU Framework Programme funding, and the only in the Top-60 Research Organisations. iMM researchers have also been awarded with other internationally meritorious grants including from HHMI, La Caixa Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and EMBO. To ensure iMM’s excellence research groups are supported by core technical facilities – Flow Cytometry, Bioimaging, Animal (rodents and zebrafish) Houses, Biosafety Level 3 (P3), Histopathology, BioBank and IT facilities. Alongside with high profile supporting services – Training Hub Office, Communication Office, Human Resources Office, Technology Transfer Office and Finance and Operations Unit.
Role in BRAINTEASER
iMM will be involved in the project’s concept definition and general procedures, including ethical and legal framework for data collection and its use. iMM will provide clinical and laboratory data from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis patients, and evidence-based medical background to establish guidelines for risk predictors, population stratification and variables inclusion.
Servicio Madrileño de Salud – SERMAS (ES)
SERMAS is the administrative structure that integrates every public hospital, primary care centres, emergency services and every public health service of the Madrid Regional Health System, providing services to a total of 6.784.804 people. SERMAS is working with a total budget of 10 billion dollars. It includes a network of 430 primary health care centers, 34 hospitals, with more than 75.000 employees. SERMAS constitutes the biggest regional healthcare organization into the Spanish National Health Service, with a total of 14.334 beds installed, 478 operating rooms, 4.787 consultation rooms, 2.492 day hospital posts and 459 haemodialysis stations. Most of the research activity carried out at SERMAS is through 14 Biomedical Research Foundations. This activity is made up of several lines, ranging from basic or fundamental research to clinical research, epidemiological research and research in health services.
In BRAINTEASER, two clinical units of the Department of Neurology of SERMAS-Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón are involved. The ALS Neuromuscular Unit treats 100-110 patients with ALS annually, within a structure made up of neurologists, pulmonologists, nutritionists, and other health and social work specialties. The Multiple Sclerosis Unit is one of the largest in Spain, taking care of more than 700 patients.
Role in BRAINTEASER
SERMAS will be one of the providers of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Multiple Sclerosis patients’ data and will contribute to the definition of the clinical protocols and requirements for both patients and clinicians. SERMAS will participate in the co-design of the proposed solution and will be responsible for the Spanish pilot being actively involved in the final validation of the project.
Fondazione Istituto Neurologico Nazionale Casimiro Mondino – MNDN-PV (IT)
MNDN-PV is the oldest neurological institute in Italy, founded in 1917. Its mission is to conduct translational research activities, closely bound up with the provision of healthcare services, with the ultimate goal of translating research findings into biomedical applications — particularly in the diagnostic and therapeutic field – but also into new schemes of healthcare organisation and management.
The core clinical activity of the Mondino Foundation is the diagnosis and treatment of adult and paediatric neurological conditions. Its scientific activities include programmes of research, both preclinical, conducted in experimental models, and clinical, conducted in patients, through which it seeks to clarify the pathogenic mechanisms underlying the different diseases and test innovative therapeutic strategies or diagnostic procedures.
The Multiple Sclerosis Center (MSC) of Mondino Foundation is active since 1990. MSC follows about 1.500 patients, suffering from MS (the majority of the cases) or from other inflammatory diseases of central nervous system. MSC offers all the diagnostic and therapeutic approaches needed to face MS, both conventional and innovative. MSC in involved in several researches, mainly focused on environmental factors related to MS risk, Epidemiology, clinical and instrumental aspects of MS, Prognostic models, Bayesian mapping of geographical disease distribution, Clinical trials on novel disease modifying therapies of MS
Role in BRAINTEASER
Mondino Foundation will be supported by the University of Pavia in the design, definition and implementation of algorithms for extracting patterns from different data, including the environmental ones.
Belit d.o.o. – BELIT (RS)
Belit is an ICT development SME with extensive expertise developed during more than two decades of existence through collaboration with governmental and financial institutions (ministries and agencies), with emphasis on quality of products and work in design, development, implementation and management of complex innovative software projects for financial and administrative institutions in Serbia. It is participating in development projects funded by the European Delegation since 2003, significantly contributing to the modernisation and standardisation of public administration and business sector in the country, and in the Balkans region.
Belit has the status of a Development-production Centre in the Registry of Innovation Activities and Organizations of the Serbian Ministry of Science and Technological Development, and is a Technology Partner of Oracle and Silver Level Development Partner of Microsoft. Participating in research and innovation projects funded by the EC since 2009 (CIP ICT-PSP, Horizon 2020), it is focused on UI/UX and applications development, big data analytics and decision support AI, clinical and primary/preventive healthcare systems, and IoT sensing deployment, integration and management, particularly in the fields of e-health and ageing, smart cities and communities, energy efficiency and consumption optimization, behavioural and surveillance and prediction of environmental risks and climate change.
Role in BRAINTEASER
BELIT will lead the establishment, deployment, running and maintenance of the core backbone system infrastructure and software for data acquisition, consolidation and fusion, storage, management and provision to other modules and components of the BRAINTEASER platform and tools. It will also contribute to all technical/development and bioinformatics-related project’s activities. Participation in data sharing, open science, dissemination and exploitation will complement the development and implementation efforts.
InSilicoTrials Technologies S.p.A
IST (IT)
IST was founded in 2012 (with the original name of Promeditec) to offer innovative solutions and specialized consultancy for clinical trials, e.g. web-based integrated platforms for the management of clinical data, images, and documents. In 2016, a new business line towards the technological support of in silico trials was developed, responding on the technological advancements in modelling and computational power allowing for in-depth in silico testing. Today, the goal of IST is to fuel innovations in healthcare by creating a collaborative web platform that enables widespread exploitation of highly advanced in silico tools for computational modelling and simulations (CM&S).
Building upon a strong base including, but not limited to a 5-year research collaboration agreement with FDA, Avicenna Alliance Board membership, collaborations with Microsoft Azure and software developers such as Ansys (www.ansys.com) market leader for computer-aided engineering software, and ICON plc (www.icon.com), market leader for pharmacometrics software, IST Technologies has further strengthened its position as innovative solution for broad-scale use of highly valuable in silico tools since its establishment.
Role in BRAINTEASER
Within the BRAINTEASER project’s management team, IST will cover the roles of Innovation and Quality & Risk Managers. IST will integrate a selected number of simulation workflows on integrate technologies with a selected number of AI ALS and MS simulation workflows (in silico protocols) to provide a comprehensive and commercially viable simulation platform for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Multiple Sclerosis monitoring, short-term risk alert, patients’ stratification, and disease progression.
ECHAlliance Company Limited by Guarantee – ECHAlliance (IE)
ECHAlliance is a multi-stakeholder international organization, facilitating connection and knowledge exchange among the players engaged in digital health innovation and deployment, driving sustainable change and disruption in the delivery of health and social care. Active in Europe and beyond, its community gathers -more than 750 member organizations and reaches out to a network of 16.500+ experts among governments, health & social care providers, leading companies and start-ups, researchers, insurances, patient organizations, citizens and investors. ECHAlliance facilitates the creation of local, regional and national digital health ecosystems which components gather in regular meetings. Furthermore, it organises key international events such as the yearly Digital Health and Wellness Summit in the frame of the Mobile World Congress 4YFN event.
In addition, the Digital Health Observatory (DHO) portal and the Digital Health Society (DHS) movement, powered by ECHAlliance, are key vehicles to encourage the transfer of lessons learnt and good practices.
ECHAlliance is partnering several R&I EU-funded projects taking care of dissemination, communication and exploitation as well as facilitating innovation management, results’ uptake and scaling up.
Role in BRAINTEASER
BRAINTEASER dissemination and communication manager ECHAlliance will lead the activities related to the Exploitation, Innovation, Communication, Dissemination work strand. ECHAlliance will design the strategy and actions for raising awareness on the BRASINTEASER’s achievements with a view to achieve the sustainability of its results. and will contribute to the organisation of the open evaluation challenges to validate the project’s results and ensure their scalability.
The European Brain Council AISBL
EBC (BE)
It also includes delegates of the pharmaceutical and device industry. EBC thus represents a vast network of patients, doctors, scientists, and along with its industrial partners make it eminently suited to work in partnership with the EU. With the aim to speak with one voice, EBC stands as the platform to foster cooperation between its member organisations and other stakeholders, consistently promoting dialogue between scientists, industry and society.
Role in BRAINTEASER
EBC will lead the activities related to the liaison between BRAINTEASR and related projects and activities to foster the exchange of information and ideas with the aim of generating synergies and collaborations. EBC will also support the project co-design activities and the BRAINTEASER communication, dissemination and exploitation initiatives.