In an era marked by rapid changes and continuous digital evolution, the European Union, within the Horizon Europe program, is focusing on improving healthcare policies and developing more effective disease prevention solutions (Destination 1- Staying healthy in a rapidly changing society).
One of the recently closed calls launched with this objective is the Staying Healthy (Two stage – 2024) call, published at the end of March 2023. This call focused on non-communicable diseases, personalized prevention, and the use of advanced technologies to support a healthy and independent life. The topic was designed to identify proposals specifically aimed at developing personalized, integrated, and holistic disease prevention strategies by leveraging multiple data sources. The initiative aimed to maximize the impact of personalized prevention in areas like non-communicable diseases, where its potential had been previously underestimated. These diseases present a significant to design more targeted and effective preventive strategies through computational approaches, algorithms, artificial intelligence tools, and a virtual challenge both in human and economic terms, as they are the leading cause of avoidable premature deaths in Europe. By assessing an individual’s health risks based on their specific characteristics, personalized prevention can complement public health prevention programs, optimizing the benefits of both approaches. Personalized prevention benefits from the use of multiple data sources to design more targeted and effective preventive strategies through computational approaches, algorithms, artificial intelligence tools and a virtual twin technology. The proposals invited under this call two years ago were expected to identify areas where prevention was insufficient and to focus on ambitious policies and interventions. These interventions were required to adopt a holistic approach, considering genetic predisposition, omics, nutrition, and overall lifestyle, with the goal of developing a digitally supported personalized prevention strategy.
A total of €50 million was allocated for this purpose, resulting in four funded projects. These projects range from the prediction and personalized prevention of chronic inflammatory disorders to cardiovascular risk assessment in menopausal women and the development of large-scale prevention strategies.
Moverim is proud to contribute to this European challenge with the Dorian Gray project, which aims to set a new standard in preventive healthcare, leveraging AI and digital tools to create a future where cognitive decline can be detected and addressed before it impacts daily life. The project focuses on the link between cardiovascular disease (CVD) and Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) in the ageing population and seeks to design a multidomain intervention to slow down the progression of CVD-related MCI and develop a trustworthy AI tool for predicting MCI. The AI tool will evolve into a digital twin framework, integrating real-world data from clinical studies via smartwatches and mobile devices, enhancing early disease detection and healthcare precision. Feasibility will be tested through randomized controlled trials with MCI and heart failure patients. DORIAN GRAY brings together 25 partners from Europe and the USA, with the University of Brescia serving as the leader. It unites a multidisciplinary team, including clinicians, psychologists, AI experts, and academics.
Stay tuned to learn more about how our project is evolving and how, alongside other initiatives, we can build a better future for the next generations. Check out https://www.doriangray-horizon.eu/.
