ExpectedOutcome:
This topic aims at supporting activities that are enabling or contributing to one or several expected impacts of destination 5 “Unlocking the full potential of new tools, technologies and digital solutions for a healthy society”. To that end, proposals under this topic should aim for delivering results that are directed towards and contributing to all of the following expected outcomes:
- Healthcare professionals benefit from secure, highly performant Point-of-Care computing technologies and devices able to process and analyse vast amounts of real-time data at the point of care, combined with extended reality and visualisation techniques, to enable continuous monitoring and/or fast real-time health status checks in clinical settings and workflows.
- Patients and clinicians benefit from wider access to real-time diagnosis, screening, monitoring and treatments using novel imaging and/or robotics systems and/or Point-of-Care devices that are seamlessly integrated in care environments and workflows.
- Quicker reaction times and improved patient safety in care settings.
- Researchers and healthcare professionals have more opportunities to use, extract value from and contribute to the uptake of real-time health data and/or Point-of-Care computing; existing technologies and methods are expected to progress from their current technology readiness levels (TRL), from TRL 3-4 to at least TRL 7[1].
- Health and care settings benefit from reduced energy consumption of Point-of-Care tools, devices and systems, and/or data analysis.
Scope:
The proposals are expected to develop and test innovative tools, devices and systems for point-of-care applications, including but not limited to robotics, photonics, bio-sensing, artificial intelligence etc. These would provide clinicians with real-time imaging, data analysis and interactive visual presentation for understanding and diagnosing diseases, facilitating risk-assessment, prevention, and carrying out medical interventions with improved patient safety. The proposals should demonstrate advancement and integration of technologies from proof-of-concept to prototype demonstration in operational environment. Devices and systems should be designed, developed and tested vis-à-vis defined use cases, based on the appropriate involvement of clinicians and other stakeholders, ensuring they can be seamlessly integrated into existing digital infrastructures and clinical workflows. The use cases in care settings could include but are not limited to surgery workflows, Intensive Care Unit workflows and integration of remote patient monitoring into clinical workflows. Data quality, integration and interoperability, as well as issues of cybersecurity and data protection have to be addressed. Design should take gender specificities into account. Clinical studies should be an integral part of the work proposed, with developmental iteration steps and consultation of regulators included as appropriate. Establishing synergies with AI Testing and Experimentation Facilities, European Digital Innovation Hubs and other similar initiatives is encouraged. Proposals must include a short description of initial business plan as part of the exploitation activities.
The proposals should address all of the following activities:
- Development and clinical validation of compact, cost- and energy-efficient, extended reality-enabled and other Point-of-Care devices and systems, with fast/real-time response times as required, reliable and capable of integration into clinical settings and workflows.
- Development and validation of instruments, continuous monitoring systems and/or analysis algorithms, including artificial intelligence approaches, for the analysis of biological samples, enabling detection of biomarkers in body fluids and tissues in clinical settings.
- Development and validation of imaging systems with a high spatial resolution down to the cellular level allowing for immediate clinical interventions. Single imaging modalities or the combination of different imaging modalities should be made compatible with other imaging tools and with state-of-the-art and/or novel medical technologies and devices, for example those used to remove tissues in precision surgery (e.g. robotic surgery).
- Advancements in the use of Point-of-Care computing, data modelling, extended reality and/or machine learning/AI technologies applied to diagnosis and risk assessment in cases requiring very fast, near to real-time response times in clinical settings and workflows. In addition, projects should showcase how distributed systems bringing computation and storage physically close to where data is generated and used can most effectively deliver actionable outputs for person-centred health care, contributing to improved patient safety, in the areas of for example healthy living support, remote patient monitoring, surgery workflows or acute care.
This topic requires the effective contribution of social sciences and humanities (SSH) disciplines and the involvement of SSH experts, institutions as well as the inclusion of relevant SSH expertise, in order to produce meaningful and significant effects enhancing the societal impact of the related research activities.
Applicants envisaging to include clinical studies should provide details of their clinical studies in the dedicated annex using the template provided in the submission system. See definition of clinical studies in the introduction to this work programme part.
Specific Topic Conditions:
Activities are expected to achieve TRL 7 by the end of the project – see General Annex B.
[1]From proof-of-concept/technology validated in lab to at least prototype demonstration in operational environment; the definitions used in H2020 for TRLs apply under this topic: https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/ref/h2020/other/wp/2016_2017/annexes/h2020-wp1617-annex-g-trl_en.pdf
