vCare health professional introduces coaching enabling digital transformation

On 26 September 2018, Dr Massimo Corbo of the vCare’s partner Department of Neurorehabilitation Sciences of Casa Cura Policlinico (CCP), Milan attended the “Connected Health Now” conference, where he presented the vCare Project.

Dr Corbo introduced the vCare project, its objectives, the proposed use cases and main developments during a Round Table on “Hospitals and research: opportunities and critical factors in digital transformation.” Members of the round table discussed possible innovations for effective and sustainable health care occurring today.

Dr Corbo announced: “Future tools, like vCare, are key to digital transformation in health. It is really important to develop a multidisciplinary approach and co-design meaningful activities that may enhance and improve our health care.”

The main topics covered during the table were about how new technologies and new paradigms offer potential to:

• Internet of Things
• Virtual reality or augmented reality, including tools for health care professionals, citizens, and patients, for remote therapy and cognitive training
• Big Data, which enables the implementation of Prevention, Prediction, Customization and Participation (the so-called “4P” model)
• Blockchain, a change of paradigm for data and data flows
• Artificial intelligence, which permits the development of new medical protocols end ethical approaches.

VCare received many shows of interest during the networking event that followed: around 70 persons participated.

The day was a highly stimulating one. It promoted the digital transformation of health. This growing phenomenon will have a potentially revolutionary impact on public and private health in the coming years. Fundamental to the day was the collaboration of clinicians and health managers, technicians, researchers, industries, and small- and medium-sized enterprises.

The event formed part of the Milan Disruptive Week Programme (http://www.disruptiveweek.it/). It was held in the new MIND – Milano Innovation District. The district originally hosted Milan’s Expo 2015. Now it is being turned into a science park focused on technological excellence. Fundamental to its success is the Human Technopole, an international research institute for Life Sciences, Healthcare, Biotech, Pharma, Agri-food, Nutrition and Data Science.

vCare partner among the three best papers at SEMANTiCS Conference 2018

A research paper presenting the first results within the vCare project has been nominated, alongside two other best paper nominees, at the SEMANTiCS Conference 2018. Nicole Merkle of the FZI Forschungszentrum Informatik at KIT (working in vCare; second from right on the photo below) and Stefan Zander of the University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt presented their work on machine learning and semantic simulation in Vienna on 12th September 2018.

The paper draws on the chronic kidney disease pathway used in the vCare project. It demonstrates the practical applicability of a simulation framework in an Internet of Things context. It shows that an agent that uses reinforcement learning can improve its performance both during and after training – as a result, it makes optimal recommendations to prospective patients during their rehabilitation.

Entitled “Using a Semantic Simulation Framework for Teaching Machine Learning Agents”, the paper will be published by Elsevier/Procedia Computer Science. Temporarily, it is available under: http://few.vu.nl/~vbr240/semantics2018/Semantics_2018_paper_33.pdf. See also our Publications Section.

The achievement sets a high standard for work in vCare over the coming three years.

Project Partner Imaginary selected for ICT 2018

ICT 2018, the official event by the European Commission on research and innovation on the digital transformation of society and industry. It will take place in Vienna on 4-6 December 2018.

The event will present an opportunity for the people involved in this digital transformation to share and discuss their experience and vision of Europe in the digital age with citizens, policymakers and science community members.

Imaginary will present its solution Rehability, based on serious games to foster neuro-rehabilitation. It is already under the European Commission’s Innovation Radar, an initiative to identify high potential innovations and innovators in EU-funded research and innovation framework programs. You can find out more about all innovations of Imaginary here: https://www.innoradar.eu/innovator/997439070

If you want to attend the ICT 2018, you can register here: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/attend-ict-2018

Digital health will have a great impact on the way doctors and medical professionals work or interact between themselves and with their patients. New tools and data will change our daily professional activities. This congress aims to contribute to a successful translation from research and development to clinical application by bringing the various stakeholders together. Clinicians will learn how to apply the most important tools in eCardiology and eHealth to improve their daily work, for the benefit of their patients, whilst researchers, technicians, industry partners, health authorities and regulators, alike, will learn from clinicians what their real needs are.

Clinicians will learn how to apply the most important tools in eCardiology and eHealth to improve their daily work, for the benefit of their patients, whilst researchers, technicians, industry partners, health authorities and regulators, alike, will learn from clinicians what their real needs are.

Join the European Society for Cardiology and meet representatives of vCare in Moscow, on October 29-30th 2018, to present or to learn about new technologies, products and/or services in eHealth, focusing on eCardiology. Contribute to build a stronger bridge by connecting with clinicians and other key stakeholders. Become an active leader in the translation of technology into real-world, clinical applications, to further improve cardiovascular patient care and clinical outcomes.

Update: See the presentation held by Marc Lange and Stefan Busnatu within our publication section.

The vCare project has released its first project flyer in order to inform interested stakeholders about the project’s core ambitions. Spread the word!

Partner Imaginary presented its solution Rehability together with the overall concept of the vCare project at the European NeuroConvention in June 2018 in London. The concept of Virtual Coaches has been presented as a way to support a personalised rehabilitation complying with age-related conditions for patients after an acute episode or with a chronic disease.

ACTIVAGE project had an exceptional presence in the IoT Week Conference 2018, the most important European event addressing the latest trends in the IoT domain, held in Bilbao, Spain from 4th until 7th of June 2018. The ACTIVAGE Technical Session in IoT Week Conference 2018 was supported by vCare and CAPTAIN.

“ACTIVAGE Large Scale Pilot project” is one of the key sectors in the IoT for the “Active&Healthy Ageing” (AHA-IoT) domain, producing evidence of the value of IoT on fostering the deployment of Active and Healthy Ageing solutions in Europe, through the integration of advanced IoT technologies across the value chain, demonstrating multiple AHA-IoT applications at large scale in a usage context, in real operational conditions.

In the framework of the 2018 IoT Week, ACTIVAGE project was presented in the Exhibition zone of the Conference. Also, a collaborative event between PM-15 projects -with the remarkable contribution of vCare Project – and ACTIVEAGE was held, including three technical sessions, organized by key invited experts from social and health care industry and user’s organisations to debate on two burning topics of AHA-IoT market: Smart Living Environments and Active and Healthy Ageing IoT solutions and technologies.

Eight PM-15 projects, vCare, CAPTAIN, EMPATHIC, NESTORE, WellCo, COUCH, SAAM and Holobalance, remotely joined the session. Key medical technology, consumer, electronics and communication leaders discussed on the potential of AHA-IoT, and how AIOTI (co-organizer of the session) and ACTIVAGE together can take the lead to boost growth of the AHA-IoT market, attracting the collaboration of the many European organisations that deals with IoT technology and with the ageing population issues in Europe.

It is noted that as an institution, the IoT Week Conference gathers the community of stakeholders engaged in developing new IoT technologies and solutions. A great number of SMEs working on digital health and AHA, AAL and Horizon 2020 (2017) PM-15 projects, H2020 ICT-IoT projects with use-cases in health and smart living environments for ageing well, AIOTI-WG5 members, Smart Cities rulers and other entities, interested in IoT advances in health and social care joined this year’s conference.

In conjunction with the next physical overall project meeting, our host partner OSAKIDETZA, organizes a partern event in Bilbao on June 5, 2018. Apart from the consortium members the main audience are local clinicians and health system representatives. The aim is to diffuse the idea behind our project, present solutions for rehabilitation at home in general and to show some of the already existing technical solutions together with the concepts behind them that could help to do so.

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.es/e/entradas-rehabilitation-of-elderly-at-home-a-global-opportunity-45860430783?aff=es2