Last week, January 28th and 29th, 2021, the H2020 BRAINTEASER project kicked off its operational activities, and Sara C. Madeira, LASIGE integrated researcher and the LASIGE's project team coordinator, was present.
All the 11 partners, a multidisciplinary gender-balanced consortium from academia, industry, clinical settings and the non-profit sector coming from six European countries, worked together during the two days’ meeting to streamline the project’s initial action plan, to confirm their roles and responsibilities and to commonly agree on the most effective strategies towards the project’s goals accomplishment.
The project consortium, led by the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, will face the ambitious challenge of using Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems to process data gathered from patients affected by Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) to make patients’ management more efficient and effective and to develop models able to predict the diseases' progression.
During the four years of the project, the BRAINTEASER study will involve 300 patients enrolled in the four participating clinical centres located in Italy, Spain and Portugal. The patients will be constantly monitored using specific instruments such as sensors and smart apps, designing personalised services and fostering the patients’ empowerment and self-management.
The project’s multidisciplinary approach, guided by a strong accent on co-design methodologies that will involve the BRAINTEASER final users as part of its team in several phases, will bring great benefits to the patients, their family’s caregivers and for the clinicians, significantly enhancing the capacity of public health systems to predict, detect, alleviate and manage the negative impacts of those factors that contribute to the diseases causes, clinical progression and survival.
Ultimately, BRAINTEASER intends to become an open, significant success story of how, in the modern healthcare scenario, the integration of clinical knowledge, technical skills and patients’ contributions can drive towards innovative approaches to care and cure.