HCLS/Grants/EUFP7ICT2011

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From Matthias:

Attached is a document listing topics of an upcoming FP7 call. I can see some opportunities for funding HCLS IG - related work. For example (I copied only relevant text portions):
 
 
Objective ICT-2011.5.1: Personal Health Systems (PHS)
a1)
Neurodegenerative diseases: focusing on remote management and treatment of patients
at the point of need, addressing also the needs of their carers. Heterogeneous data (e.g.,
genetic data, images, movement recordings, interaction and behavioural data) will be used
for assessment of patients’ health status. Depending on the disease addressed, proposed
approaches may employ neural recording, neurostimulation and/or drug delivery systems.
a2)
Rehabilitation of stroke and neurological conditions: providing patient services at home,
with telesupervision by health professionals as and when required. Solutions may build on
robotic and haptic technologies, wearable systems, implants, human-computer interfaces,
web services or virtual reality environments to facilitate continuity of personalised
cognitive and functional rehabilitation. Heterogeneous data (e.g., biofeedback, monitoring
of limb movements, behavioural monitoring and analysis) and predictive models will be
used to assess patient status and progress, monitor risk factors and predict new episodes.
 
 
 
Objective ICT-2011.5.2 Virtual Physiological Human
Target outcomes
a)
Patient-specific predictive computer-based models and simulation of major diseases
integrating medical, biological and environmental data. Preference will be given to proposals
that manage to explore the interaction and integration of environmental factors with medical
and biological factors enabling the development of predictive models and simulation for
understanding the evolution and progression of major diseases. These predictive models will
allow bio-medical researchers to investigate the influence of environmental factors on major
diseases and their interactions with other health factors. The use and benefits of the resulting
models must be demonstrated for a specific clinical need covering the onset and the evolution
of the disease. All major diseases could be targeted as clinical application.
b)
Development of ICT tools, services and infrastructure to obtain more elaborate and
reusable multi-scale models
(e.g. models of diseases, organs) and larger repositories to
show benefits of having both the data and models readily available. Projects should address at
least one of the following activities: i) the robustness and reproducibility which are essential
to allow models to be re-used when a model representing a physiological function is
incorporated into a more comprehensive model. Standards for models and data, tools and
repositories should be developed to achieve a high level of robustness and reproducibility of
models for re-use; ii) the development of VPH Infostructure including a sustainable VPH
model and data repositories. Appropriate tools (e.g. version control, archiving, upgrades…)
and attributes such as usability and accessibility should be particularly addressed to ensure
VPH community acceptance. The use of open environments and open-source software is
expected to improve the accessibly and evolution of the repositories.
c)
One Coordination and Support Action to develop an RTD roadmap preparing the ground
for a future grand challenge on a "Digital Patient". The "Digital Patient" is a digital
representation of the integration of the different patients-specific models for better prediction
and treatment of diseases in order to provide patients with an affordable, personalised and
predictive care. A road-map should be developed i) to consolidate the research so far, ii) to
capture and quantify the needs and iii) to develop a vision and a sound ICT research agenda
around the "Digital Patient
d)
Early demonstrators and proof of concept of digital representations of health status of
patients integrating different patient-specific data and models of organs into a more coherent
representation of a "Digital Patient". Innovative digital representations of the health status of
patients based on relevant data and models (medical, anatomical, physiological and genetic,
etc) , are visualised and represented in 4D models and usable for care, personalized
prevention and research.
 

Objective ICT-2011.5.3 Patient Guidance Services (PGS), safety and healthcare record
information reuse
Target outcomes
Projects are expected to address one of the following 2 application areas:
a)
Patient guidance services (PGS) for personalised management of health status. The
aim is to enhance the engagement of patients in care and disease prevention and improve
health outcomes and patient satisfaction. The work focuses on semantic integration of patient
health data into a personal health record system (PHR) that is ubiquitously and securely
accessible by patients and their physicians and includes an environment for their cooperation.
The users of the PGS will be primarily patients and the carers and healthcare professionals
they authorise. The services to be supported will be identified in close cooperation with
clinicians, patients and their carers and social services. Examples of services include shared
decision support to treatment compliance; safety alerts and reporting; evidence based
information and patient networking.
The PGS will interoperate with state-of-art wearable or portable, auto-adaptive, selfcalibrating
systems for health status monitoring and diagnosis. They take into account (i) the
operation and acquisition of physiological data in non-clinically controlled environments and
(ii) the variability in the population by adjusting clinical parameters and their thresholds to the
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individual's conditions. They will incorporate available modelling and predictive algorithms
to analyse patterns in behaviour or recorded data and to enable the shared patient-doctor
decision support systems. The PGS will be capable of integrating the latest available medical
knowledge and adapting to changes in it.
The personal health record systems will interoperate with heterogeneous and fragmented
healthcare information systems. Security and privacy protection issues should be addressed.
b)
Tools and environments enabling the re-use of electronic health records.
Development of an advanced environment for clinical research that enables seamless, secure
and consistent integration or linking of clinical care information in electronic health records
(EHR/PHR) with information in clinical trial systems. Results are expected to help health
professionals avoid double data entry, assist in identification of patients for clinical trials and
enable early detection of potential patient safety issues. Research will focus on the areas of
improving semantic interoperability between EHR and clinical research systems. This will
include the definition and validation of core data sets that enable scalable and standardised
linking with EHR repositories. Proposals will address data protection and security needs and
be fully compliant with all applicable legislation as well as best practice. Research results
should be validated in use cases with a high potential for improving patient safety in the
clinical research and epidemiology fields.
A significant part of proposals a) and b) will address semantic interoperability. Resources are
to be targeted to use and complete the common shared info-structure (terminologies, health
care record structures, and medical logic representations) that will be established by the PCP
under the governance of the Network of Excellence described below
.
c)
A Network of Excellence on semantic interoperability and European Health
Infostructure.
The aim is to engage leaders and organisations, including professional organisations, national
competence centres, industrial associations and standards development organisations to define
and implement a research agenda on the semantic interoperability of health information
systems and particularly electronic health records. European and international organisations in
the domains of medical terminology, record architecture, medical logic and workflow are
expected to participate. The work will also include set up of the governance of a European
virtual organisation for multilingual, multicultural adaptation of international classifications
and terminology and propose means for the sustainability and governance of health
information info-structure.

Especially the last topic sounds like a perfect fit for the HCLS IG activities.