Deadline: 20-Sep-22
The European Commission (EC) is pleased to announce a call for proposals to an innovative decision-support system for improved care pathways for patients with neurodegenerative diseases and comorbidities.
The primary objective of this topic is to develop a decision-support system to enhance medical decisions with targeted clinical knowledge, patient information, and other health information for a more holistic (better integrating diagnosis, treatment and care and breaking silos across specialities) approach to managing and treating patients with a neurodegenerative disease and a comorbid condition, addressing the needs of today, while creating preparedness for a future paradigm-shift in treatment.
In their proposal, applicants should formulate how to best achieve all the outcomes/outputs of this topic, also describing the expected actual improvement in care and treatment outcomes and reflecting on aspects of implementation into routine care and sustainability, that are barriers to developing and distributing/delivering innovations. This should be preceded by a key stakeholder mapping to grasp the relevant players within this ecosystem and build and leverage as much as possible upon already available resources and learnings.
Proposals should address a patient population with a neurodegenerative disease where there is evidence of the importance of comorbidities in their healthcare pathways and on patient quality of life. The choice of the comorbidity should consider the burden for patients, carers and families, and the availability of medical technology-generated data. Cancer is out of scope.
Funding Information
The check will normally be done for the coordinator if the requested grant amount is equal to or greater than EUR 500 000, except for:
- public bodies (entities established as a public body under national law, including local, regional or national authorities) or international organisations; and
- cases where the individual requested grant amount is not more than EUR 60 000 (lowvalue grant).
Expected Outcome
R&I actions to be supported under this topic shall contribute to the following outcomes:
- A (sustainable) re-usable, interoperable, easily adaptable, and scalable digital platform, capable of translating a heterogeneous and fragmented set of complex measurable and analysable health data elements into a clinical-decision-support system that can guide patients to better health and quality of life. Initially designed for patients with neurodegenerative diseases and comorbidities, the platform’s easy adaptability ensures its re-use in other health areas for the benefit of healthcare professionals, patients, families, and carers, thereby promoting its wider use.
- A sustainable framework for collaboration across specialities and all relevant stakeholders to foster social innovation to decrease the burden on patients, families, and carers and to develop models to incentivise/maintain collaboration and ensure feasibility of future implementation.
- Effective and agreed standards and guidelines that support both data collection and all operational features of the digital platform enabling health technology developers to create efficient clinical decision support systems for a more patient-centric and optimised delivery of healthcare interventions. Healthcare professionals/providers use these solutions leading to improvements in the healthcare pathways.
- Enhanced, and more reliable tools and methods (e.g., analytical tools and algorithms) able to provide (near) real time feedback on health interventions, including on the usability, efficacy/effectiveness, and the long-term safety of health technologies. Together, these enable healthcare professionals and providers to make more inclusive and efficient patient-centred decisions that, additionally, can aid the development of predictive simulation tools and models.
- Enhanced clinical interpretation of multi-modal, multi-parametric data including socio-economical, which influence variations in the status of the patient with neurodegenerative disease and the required levels of care. This will be benefitting the patients, as a more person-centric treatment and care, and the healthcare providers as optimised allocation of resources, and prediction of how patients’ needs will change due to their co-morbid condition or other precipitating medical factors.
Eligibility Criteria
To be eligible for funding, applicants must be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.:
- the Member States of the European Union, including their outermost regions;
- the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) linked to the Member States;
- eligible non-EU countries:
- countries associated to Horizon Europe;
- low- and middle-income countries.
For more information, visit https://bit.ly/3NultNa