ELIXIRION will create the first fully-integrated, inter- and multi-disciplinary, highly-innovative training and research network that will set the foundations of the emerging H4.0 paradigm by leveraging, developing, and advancing 6G technologies targeting to:
i) provide all citizens/patients with a wide range of services of different requirements, such as low latency for latency-critical applications, high speed for data hungry services and ubiquitous secure access to healthcare resources, anytime, anywhere, respecting all privacy aspects, and
ii) ensure a secure, effective, and democratized healthcare ecosystem to all involved stakeholders, while creating a sustainable open H4.0 market facilitating access to innovators. The motivation behind the Elixirion project is rooted in the potential of merging healthcare and 6G technologies. Recognizing the rapid advancements in
communication networks, our goal is to harness these cutting-edge technologies for the improvement of healthcare systems.
This vision will be realized through three core objectives:
1. Leverage a range of 6G technologies towards a powerful interconnected network for ubiquitous ultra-high performance access to the H4.0 ecosystem targeting at up to 99.99999% reliability, 100% coverage, up to 1 Tbps capacity, ~2x higher energy efficiency and ~55% Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) reduction compared to current networks.
2. Design edge-aware platforms leveraging diverse computing capabilities of the network offering down to sub-ms task execution through parallelization, serverless and distributed computing by intra- and inter-edge node AI-enabled orchestration techniques offering 99.99999% service continuity for real-time H4.0 applications. Leverage
robust AI/Machine Learning (ML) techniques combined with MEC capabilities to perform data analytics, and allow fast algorithm execution and decision making, while ensuring General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance and trusted role-based data sharing among the involved entities.
3. Create a unified, sustainable, democratized and ubiquitous (always-on) H4.0 ecosystem promoting the secure collaboration of the involved stakeholders (e.g. network operators, infrastructure, MEC and cloud providers, healthcare facilities (e.g. hospitals) and healthcare technology providers (e.g. SW and IoMT solutions)) through
blockchain-based incentive engineering, while devising new business models and easing access to new players. Ensure secure and efficient information handling for a massive number of connections, supported by fully-automated E2E slicing and zero-touch orchestration optimizing network performance. Perform XAI-enabled big data
analytics across the network, resulting in transparent and interpretable outputs that facilitate decision-making in the H4.0 ecosystem (e.g. XAI analytics on glucose monitoring data from wearables could reliably predict hypoglycemic events and anticipate hospital service overloads, while making the results interpretable).
The above objectives are divided into 10 research challenges to be addressed by the 10 DCs hired by the consortium members. All DCs will be recruited by the consortium for 36 months and they will be enrolled in PhD programs. Moreover, they will receive training through:
Research and their successful accomplishment of their individual projects.
Network wide training activities, i.e. related to their work schools and courses in transferable skills.
Secondment, i.e. they will perform two 3-month secondments: one inter-sectoral (academia-industry) and one interdisciplinary (to a healthcare partner) secondment.
Industrial Dissemination Days, i.e. The DCs will get feedback from industry experts.
Interaction with structured research teams either in the academic or the industrial environment.
Participation to international conferences/workshops.
