HIGHWAY TO HEALTH – COVend at the ENVISION project final event

HIGHWAY TO HEALTH - COVend at the ENVISION project final event

On the 24th of January, COVend joined the ENVISION project fianl event, Highway to Health in Brussels.

As the EU-funded project ENVISION has come to an end, the event was devoted to the representation of its results and impact on digital healthcare while fighting COVID-19. Project Coordinator Prof. Dr. Dr. med. Kai Zacharowski reflected on the progress of the project’s main objectives – the development of an intelligent plug-and-play digital tool for real-time surveillance of COVID-19 patients and smart decision-making in intensive care units. One of the event’s key topics was how to improve patient safety and combat future health threats using Artificial Intelligence. A special guest Dagmar Lüttel, the Scientific Associate at Aktionsbündnis Patientensicherheit e.V. (APS), gave an overview of how the Active Alliance for Patient Safety offers guidance for healthcare staff on digital health and patient information on COVID-19. Another important topic raised during the event was data standardisation and digital healthcare. During this session, Dr. Oliver Old, Data Scientist and Statistician at University Clinics Frankfurt, presented on digital healthcare in light of the FAIR principle. A Clinical Terminology Architecture Lead at eHealth Ireland and Chair of Member Forum for SNOMED International, Theresa Barry was sharing insights on SNOMED CTand how it supports the development of comprehensive, high-quality clinical content in electronic health records. Finally, Dr. Samira Maghool, Assistant Professor (RTD-A) at Università degli Studi di Milano, hosted a presentation on another EU-funded project SMART BEAR – a big data platform that offers evidence-based personalised support for healthy and independent living at home.

Invited clinicians, scientists, representatives of patient safety organisations and policymakers shared their vision on the promising opportunities and challenges of developing and implementing AI tools in the EU. The requirements and challenges of data collection and processing in the EU and the patient’s perspective on using personal data for research and development were also discussed during the event.

Insufficient data and limited knowledge on the COVID-19 as well as the lack of tools to support the intensivists in making accurate, timely and informed decisions has led to high mortality rates. As a reaction to the coronavirus disease, the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme has set up an innovation action to support projects developing tools and technologies to improve surveillance and care of COVID-19 patients. One of these projects, ENVISION, brought together 21 partners from 13 European countries to collect data and increase our knowledge of the disease by advancing an innovative digital tool, the Sandman.MD, a real-time and plug-and-play monitoring app, to an intelligent decision-support system for monitoring, prediction and treatment of COVID-19 patients in ICUs – the Sandman.ICU.

You can learn more about ENVISION on the project’s website.