Presentation carried out during the EMBC'16 conference in Orlando the 17th of August by Paulo Carvalho and Vicente Traver introducing the LINK project and the results of the first iteration with experts about the future opportunities and challenges for research on personalised health care for cardiovascular disease management.

1. LINK
Linking Excellence in Biomedical knowledge
and Computational Intelligence Research for
personalized management of CVD within PHC
OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR
RESEARCH ON INTELLIGENT ALGORITHMS FOR
PHEALTH
ORLANDO, 17TH AUGUST 2016
P. CARVALHO
V. TRAVER

2. Link
 Linking Excellence in Biomedical knowledge and
Computational Intelligence Research for personalized
management of CVD within PHC
 Grant Agreement No: 692023
 Start Date: 1st January 2016
 End Date: 31st December 2018
 Total Budget: 1,010,590.00€
EMBC 2016

3. The Consortium
3 partners
3 countries
EMBC 2016

4. Objectives
 Objective 1: To define a research agenda
 Establishment of a research forum for intelligent algorithms for PHC in CVD
management.
 Industry: Philips, IntelliCare, VTT, Medtronic, TSB
 Academic: California University, Georgia Tech, Uni. Zagreb,
 Professional Societies & Professionals: IFMBE, IEEE-EMBS, European Cardiology
Society, Portuguese Cardiology Society, HL7 Foudation, ISfTeH, several hospitals
 Decision Makers: Portuguese Health Ministry, Croatian Health Ministry
 Patients: European Patient Forum, Patients like me
 Contact with fundamental stakeholders in the field to help identifying key gaps
and barriers
 Definition of a research agenda for intelligent algorithms for PHC in CVD
management.
EMBC 2016

5. Objectives
 Objective 2: To deepen the link between research
institutions in a sustainable way
 Identification, planning and implementation of
common research tracks.
 Successful definition of concepts and project
proposals for H2020 framework.
 Definition and implementation of a structured
common data repository and a pool of common
resources.
EMBC 2016

6. Objectives
 Objective 3: To enhance S&T excellence in intelligent
algorithms for PHC for CVD management.
 Develop research track
 Exchange and internship program of researchers
 Co-advisement of PhD students and post-docs
 Successful definition of PhD thesis and post-doc themes as
well as competitive grant applications
 Increase of common journal and conference publications
EMBC 2016

7. Objectives
 Objective 4: To increase international impact and recognition
 Definition of curricula and training materials for advanced training programs for intelligent algorithms
for PHC in CVD management
 Contribute to IEEE and IFMBE
 Participation on the Health Informatics Book Series by the Health Informatics WG of OFMBE
 Organization of major international conferences and workshops in the field
 IEEE-BHI 2016 – Special Session
 PAHCE 2016 – Special Session & Round Table
 CBEB 2016 - Workshop
 IEEE-EMBC 2016 – Special Session
 Medicon 2019
 Co-organization of summer schools
 IEEE – Biomedical Signal Processing
 Organization of special issues of Journals
EMBC 2016

8. Objectives
 Objective 5: To enhance Innovation and Inclusion
 Establishment of an innovation forum in order to
identify gaps, industrial needs and best practices to
foster innovation culture in PHC
 Define of a roadmap for EU research widening and
participation
EMBC 2016

9. The Approach
EMBC 2016
Relevant
Stakeholders

10. Explicit Goals of the Preliminary Research
Agenda
 Identify with a solid perspective what are the right
questions and challenges to be solved from a
research perspective
 To engage representatives from the different
stakeholders in the PHC for CVD field, that will help
us to prioritize the key hot topics.
 To create a preliminary research agenda that will
enhance S&T excellence of LINK institutions but
also for the entire community in systems for
pHealth solutions for CVD management.
EMBC 2016

11. The WP1 approach
STRATEGIC
RESEARCH
AGENDA
D1.1
Strategic
Research
analysis
SWOT
M3
D1.3
Action Plan
Workshops
M12
D1.2
Initial
Research
Agenda
Delphi
study
M6
D1.4
Research
Agenda
Workshops
and Delphi
study
M30
T1.1 T1.3 T1.4
T1.2 RESEARCH
INNOVATION
FORUM
T1.5
EMBC 2016

12. Research Innovation Forum (RIF)
 Composed by a set of experts from different
countries (US, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, etc.)
and different profiles (clinician, decision maker,
multinational company, researcher, entrepreneur,
patients ’associations).
 Up to now, 22 members have accepted to be part
of the RIF.
EMBC 2016

13. Focus
 Analysis of the State of the Art (SoA) and future
trends in pHealth solutions for integrated CVD
management
 Identification of open research problems and
opportunities in algorithms for pHealth solutions
for integrated CVD management to support these
concepts
 Identification of opportunities for Concept
development in pHealth solutions for integrated
CVD management
EMBC 2016

14. Methodology
 Delphi study - Iterative process
 Statements from internal analysis and discussion with
experts
 3 major focus
 Analysis of the State of the Art (SoA) and future trends in
pHealth solutions for integrated CVD management (13)
 Identification of open research problems and opportunities
in algorithms for pHealth solutions for integrated CVD
management to support these concepts (11)
 Identification of opportunities for Concept development in
pHealth solutions for integrated CVD management (5)
EMBC 2016

15. Methodology
 Top 5 for each point were selected and prioritised
 Free text to justify reasons – produce qualitative
added value
EMBC 2016

16. Analysis of the SoA and future trends
 3. New algorithms are needed to infer knowledge from
data in order to practice evidence-based medicine (37)
 4. Quality of data is a dimension not to be missed when
researchers are inferring knowledge from heterogeneous
databases (26)
 1. Success of PHC for CVD is fully dependent on data
availability (20)
 7. It is crucial to have real time telemonitoring to provide
PHC services, being possible thanks to mobile services
(16)
EMBC 2016

17. Analysis of the SoA and future trends
 There a set of statements (2, 6, 10, 11, 12) of interest
for half of the experts. These middle priority
statements are the ones focused on robots, pervasive
telemonitoring, legal issues, ICT based clinical
management and creation of individualized
behavioural models.
 Statements 5 and 13 about data infrastructure and
patient models were the less select/prioritized by
the experts. Statements 8 and 9 about ethical issues
and feature selection were also not selected by the
majority of experts.
EMBC 2016

18. Identification of open research problems and
opportunities in algorithms for pHealth solutions
TOP PRIORITY QUESTIONS
 11. How to support the integration, discovery and use
of clinical knowledge in daily clinical practice? (27)
 10. How to personalize models for diagnosis and
prognosis? (27)
 5. Which indicators are the key ones for CVD risk
assessment? (26)
 6. What are the best strategies to combine data and
knowledge driven learning and modelling
approaches? (19)
EMBC 2016

19. Identification of open research problems and
opportunities in algorithms for pHealth solutions
MID PRIORITY QUESTIONS
 1. How can different sources of information be
integrated, especially on large databases? (15)
 8. How can the assessment of cardiovascular
functions and status using wearable technologies
can be improved? (14)
 9. How can multi modal and multi scale data fusion
for robust biosignal processing be improved? (12)
 3. How will mobile technologies improve
continuous monitoring? (10)
EMBC 2016

20. Opportunities for concept development
of pHealth solutions
EMBC 2016

21. What’s next?
 Iterative fine tuning of Research Agenda
 Create the ecosystem:
 PhD grants
 Common proposals
 Stays
 Summer schools
 Articles, conferences, papers and book chapters
EMBC 2016

22. Questions
 Do you agree with the identified hot topics? Do
you miss anything?
 What are the main barriers that we can face for
each one of such topics?
 Which are the advances do you foresee in each
one of the topics for 2020?
 For 2020, would you keep the same priorities?
Would you change anything?
EMBC 2016