UNIVERSITY COLLEGE CORK - NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, CORK

eCAP aims to deliver a novel medical device which combines a smart capsule with an e-health platform for better diagnostics, patient empowered disease management and hence, improved outcomes for patients with gastrointestinal (GI) diseases. Our project will create a modular and implantable capsule with multi-sensing capacity that enables GI physiology monitoring for a controlled time period, leveraging the minimally invasive surgical approach of flexible endoscopy. eCAP will use a worldwide ubiquitous smartphone communication standard, together with cloud computing technology and application interfaces to integrate, process and interpret longitudinal physiological data collected by the capsule. The digital platform is designed to improve the accuracy and clinical usefulness of standard test data by incorporating patient reported outcome measures. The clinician is able to personalize the test for the patient and receive accurate and meaningful results from this multi-stream data input with interpretation aided by Artificial Intelligence. The universality of the eCAP solution will allow dissemination of advanced GI disease diagnostics to patients and doctors worldwide, including low resource environments. During the project, we will demonstrate eCAP?s clinical value and cost savings using gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), a worldwide, common, and extremely costly problem, as a clinical target. Clinical evaluation with health-economics analysis will be conducted in France, Ukraine and Kenya, and a specific education program will be developed to train practitioners to use the novel technology. eCAP builds on several years of R&D by our consortium in the field of implantable capsules for GI disease diagnostics. Its ambition is to facilitate a shift in GI diagnostics from its current unscalable analogue version to a patient centered e-health tool and to make Europe the leader in the rapidly growing field of connected medical devices for remote patient monitoring.

EC contribution:

EUR 1M

Start:

2022-05-01

End:

2026-04-30

Status:

SIGNED

Scheme:

HORIZON-IA

Call:

HORIZON-HLTH-2021-TOOL-06

View on CORDIS (DOI 10.3030/101057525)

SEISMEC will demonstrate an empowered, human-centred and ethical development of digital and industrial technologies in 17 pilots in 19 companies from 14 countries across 14 industrial ecosystems. It will do so through a two-way engagement in the development of technologies, empowering end-users and workers, and supporting social innovation, in a process labelled the SEISMEC shift. It will contribute to increased inclusiveness, by supporting a human-centred approach to technology development that is aligned with European social and ethical values (including gender and intersectional aspects). The benefits of human centrism will be measured in Creativity, Collaboration, Autonomy, Automation, Productivity, Privacy, Safety and job Satisfaction, the CAPS empowerment factors for human-centrism. SEIMSECs two-way engagement introduces technical innovations such as explainability, co-development, feedback methods and interfaces to enhance human centrism, but also incorporates plans, needs and innovations from companies and their workers steering them towards an empowered human-centric Industry 5.0 path. The consortium brings together institutions at the forefront of engineering, computer science, networking and exploitation, coordinated by a world-leading social sciences and humanities university, and building up on groundbreaking European projects on industrial innovation. SEISMEC pilots are representative of all sectors and company sizes, and most European countries and worker roles. Every industrial enterprise in Europe will be able to see some aspect of their activity reflected in SEISMECs pilots and will be able to learn from the project’s outputs through an active campaign of cross-sector empowerment practices exchange. With a strong engagement of European, national and local stakeholders, SEISMEC is landmark effort in European industry’s shift to empowerment and human-centrism, one that puts the worker and European Values at the core of its global competitiveness

EC contribution:

EUR 903k

Start:

2024-01-01

End:

2027-12-31

Status:

SIGNED

Scheme:

HORIZON-RIA

Call:

HORIZON-CL4-2023-HUMAN-01

View on CORDIS (DOI 10.3030/101135884)

Female breast cancer is the most diagnosed cancer worldwide. In 2020, the International Agency for Research on Cancer estimated more than 2.26 million new cases of breast cancer. Early detection is crucial to survival; recovery rates approach 90% when detected in early stages. National population-based cancer screening programmes in Europe currently implement 3 standard imaging modalities: mammography, ultrasound and MRI. The downsides of these screening methods include ionising radiation, high costs and high false positive rates in screening results. Our multidisciplinary consortium of 16 partners from 10 countries aims to contribute to EU’s Mission on Cancer and Beating Cancer Plan by drastically improving the prevention, diagnosis and monitoring of breast cancer while reducing the burden on women and female patients and their families, health care professionals and others who are directly or indirectly affected by breast cancer. ThermoBreast proposes a new solution for accurate, harmless and non-contact screening, equally applicable for all age groups and breast densities and capable of detecting pre-cancerous states. This risk-free screening technology, recently patented by the project coordinator ThermoMind LTD, can detect vascular anomalies and asymmetry, caused by cancerous growth. It combines innovative screening through multiple sensitive infrared sensors with advanced AI analysis of temporal dynamic thermal patterns. Through its patient-centred integrated diagnostics approach, this project converges intelligent computer vision, blood vessel extraction and tissue analysis with advanced information technology to deliver a medical class 1 device that will be validated in an international multicentre clinical study. To enhance stakeholder participation, ThermoBreast involves end users, SSH experts and a patient organisation in the co-creation of the new screening solution and assesses its health and socio-economic benefits as well as its cost effectiveness. This action is part of the Cancer Mission cluster of projects on ‘Prevention, including Screening’.

EC contribution:

EUR 692k

Start:

2023-01-01

End:

2026-12-31

Status:

TERMINATED

Scheme:

HORIZON-RIA

Call:

HORIZON-MISS-2021-CANCER-02

View on CORDIS (DOI 10.3030/101096329)

Dementia is caused by a range of illnesses and disorders that damage the brain either directly or indirectly. With the rise of the ageing population in the EU, dementia is becoming a serious problem. Digital health interventions have the potential to improve the accessibility and effectiveness of palliative care. Palliative care is an area where these technologies are increasingly being evaluated for education (e.g. online learning, mobile applications or Virtual Reality tools), symptom management, care planning, decision-making, and interaction (e.g. professionals and caregivers using phones, internet and computer systems). However, most studies focus on a specific intervention with heterogeneous outcomes and are exposed to professional gatekeeping and biased samples consisting of patients who are mostly well and without considering cultural impacts. Due to improved understanding and treatment, more effective and innovative health technologies, improved patient safety and better ability and preparedness to manage epidemic outbreaks, along with priorities related to quality of life of dementia patients and survivors, treatment and dementia data monitoring should be crucial. This project will focus on: i) better understanding of dementia, focusing on their consequences, including pain, distress and causative links between health determinants, disease and interventions in order to provide evidence-base for policy-making, ii) identification of holistic intervention (treatment and care) and assessment of health outcomes, iii) innovative digital tools to optimize clinical workflows and iv) scientific evidence for improved/tailored policies and legal frameworks and to inform major policy initiatives at EU and global level. We target exactly those aspects of value by integrating digital interventions as palliative care of patients with poor prognosis of dementia and evaluating the impact of digital health interventions using Artificial Intelligence.

EC contribution:

EUR 592k

Start:

2024-01-01

End:

2027-12-31

Status:

SIGNED

Scheme:

HORIZON-RIA

Call:

HORIZON-HLTH-2023-DISEASE-03

View on CORDIS (DOI 10.3030/101136769)

NEUROPIC will design, build, measure, and explore a novel programmable photonic chip architecture with transformational impact potential on photonics for data centers, autonomous vehicles, quantum information processors, and much more. We will explore and pioneer programmability of large-scale photonic circuits using nanoelectromechanical technologies, which benefit from ultralow power consumption, compact footprint, and potentially faster operation than existing approaches. Building on very recent breakthroughs from the consortium partners, the nanotechnology is now in place to begin the exploration of programmable photonic chips scaled to thousands of programmable nodes. The main objectives range from sustainable and high-performance silicon nanomachining over establishing a scalable platform for ultralow-power nanoelectromechanical programmable silicon photonics to massively parallel optical interconnects. Our final goal is to use the network of independent and fully controllable nodes for neuromorphic computing to quantify the role of complexity for artificial intelligence. The objectives present a strong mutual synergy, scientific impact, and sustainability and set the foundations for four highly attractive business cases with complementary profiles in terms of risk and market size. NEUROPIC is therefore designed to address the fundamental scientific and technological questions of today whose answers hold potential for very large commercial impact in the future. Our quest comes with a new set of challenges and calls for a radically new approach to photonics. NEUROPIC unites some of the world’s leading researchers and companies in nanotechnology, photonics, advanced manufacturing, and complex systems in a risky and highly interdisciplinary research project with the ambition of founding a new paradigm of programmable silicon photonics.

EC contribution:

EUR 495k

Start:

2023-03-01

End:

2027-02-28

Status:

SIGNED

Scheme:

HORIZON-EIC

Call:

HORIZON-EIC-2022-PATHFINDEROPEN-01

View on CORDIS (DOI 10.3030/101098961)

Mission Ocean, seas and water aims at restoring the health of our ocean and waters by 2030, as a major contributor to the European Green Deal and the Sustainable Development Goals. Research and innovation will be a key component of the Mission, which will link initiatives across disciplines, mobilise policymakers, stakeholders and citizens, and leverage public and private investments. PREP4BLUE overarching objective is to facilitate a successful first phase (2022-2025) of the Mission, by developing the co-creation and co-implementation R&I modalities required to achieve the Mission objectives and preparing the ground for inspiring and engaging citizens and stakeholders. The project is designed to deliver a series of tools, guidelines, methodologies and recommendations tested through pilots, which will interlink, leverage and optimise activities among the projects funded under the Mission. Our systemic approach will foster cohesion and connectivity between knowledge and technology, funding, regulation, education and skills, social structures and co-creation with R&I actors, citizens and stakeholders. PREP4BLUE multidisciplinary and multi-actor consortium is actively engaged in basin-based strategies and related R&I activities, with strong experience in co-developing business models and recommendations for policy-makers, expertise in social sciences related to participative democracy and citizen engagement and excellent track-record in methodologies for knowledge management and transfer, as well as in stakeholder engagement. PREP4BLUE will also carry out strategic actions to assure the alignment of our CSA with the evolution of the Mission components, including the Mission Core Network, other contributors to the Mission and other Missions. Our project will contribute to preparedness and engagement of all relevant stakeholders to empower them to play an active role in the Mission.

EC contribution:

EUR 268k

Start:

2022-06-01

End:

2025-05-31

Status:

SIGNED

Scheme:

HORIZON-CSA

Call:

HORIZON-MISS-2021-OCEAN-01

View on CORDIS (DOI 10.3030/101056957)

AI-based decision support systems are increasingly deployed in industry, in the public and private sectors, and in policy-making. As our society is facing a dramatic increase in inequalities and intersectional discrimination, we need to prevent AI systems to amplify this phenomenon but rather mitigate it. To trust these systems, domain experts and stakeholders need to trust the decisions. Fairness stands as one of the main principles of Trustworthy AI promoted at EU level. How these principles, in particular fairness, translate into technical, functional social, and lawful requirements in the AI system design is still an open question. Similarly we don’t know how to test if a system is compliant with these principles and repair it in case it is not. AEQUITAS proposes the design of a controlled experimentation environment for developers and users to create controlled experiments for - assessing the bias in AI systems, e.g., identifying potential causes of bias in data, algorithms, and interpretation of results, - providing, when possible, effective methods and engineering guidelines to repair, remove, and mitigate bias, - provide fairness-by-design guidelines, methodologies, and software engineering techniques to design new bias-free systems The experimentation environment generates synthetic data sets with different features influencing fairness for a test in laboratories. Real use cases in health care, human resources and social disadvantaged group challenges further test the experimentation platform showcasing the effectiveness of the solution proposed. The experimentation playground will be integrated on the AI-on-demand platform to boost its uptake, but a stand-alone release will enable on-premise privacy-preserving test of AI-systems fairness. AEQUITAS relies on a strong consortium featuring AI experts, domain experts in the use case sectors as well as social scientists and associations defending rights of minorities and discriminated groups.

EC contribution:

EUR 267k

Start:

2022-11-01

End:

2025-10-31

Status:

SIGNED

Scheme:

HORIZON-RIA

Call:

HORIZON-CL4-2021-HUMAN-01

View on CORDIS (DOI 10.3030/101070363)