Project description
A new course for cardiovascular care
Cardiovascular disorders pose a health challenge with patients facing issues like systemic hypertension, heart failure, and atrial septal defects. Unfortunately, they are often left with limited treatment options. These conditions impact the cardiovascular system and pose a high risk of co-morbidities affecting vital organs such as the kidneys and brain. With this in mind, the EU-funded VITAL project aims to revolutionise cardiovascular care by delivering a comprehensive, clinically validated multi-scale, multi-organ modelling platform. By creating virtual human twins based on individual patient data, VITAL pioneers a personalised approach to optimise medical and surgical therapies. With validation through five clinical studies in France and the UK involving over 200 patients, VITAL stands at the forefront of cardiovascular care.
Objective
VITAL will deliver a comprehensive clinically validated multi-scale, multi-organ modelling platform that is driven by and can represent individual patient data acquired, both in the clinic and from wearable technology. The platform will create a virtual human twin for individualised and sex-specific optimisation of medical (pharmacological) or surgical (interventional) therapy for complex, multifactorial cardiovascular disorders that have systemic impact and high risk of comorbidities of a.o. the kidney and brain: systemic hypertension, heart failure (with/without preserved ejection fraction) and hemodynamically complicated atrial septal defects.User-friendly interfaces, co-created with healthcare professionals, will provide access to the technology. The platform consolidates existing multi-scale and multi-organ models of the heart, lung and systemic circulation and their regulatory mechanisms, and advances the state-of-the art by incorporating currently missing biophysics-based, physiology-underpinned components (kidney-related blood pressure control, hormonal actions, vascular region-specific smooth muscle cell functionality, and cardiac and arterial growth and remodelling mechano-biological mechanisms). By the end of the project, the platform will have been validated and tested in more than 200 patients across 5 clinical studies in France and the UK to optimise the treatment of patients with resistant systemic hypertension, heart failure or atrial septum defects. A unique aspect of VITAL is its focus on monitoring the mental health of patients to understand their expectations and reservations towards digital health technology. VITAL technology will be compliant with and contribute directly to the VPHi and EDITH virtual twin ecosystem. This will further unlock the potential of new digital tools that intelligently combine the power of physics-based multi-scale models, artificial intelligence and data to provide better health care for all.
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Funding Scheme
HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation ActionsCoordinator
9000 Gent
Belgium