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Patient-Centric blOod saMpling FOr impRoved healThcare (Project-COMFORT)

Project description

Micro-sampling as an alternative to blood draw

Telehealth improves care accessibility for underserved populations, while Patient-Centric micro-Sampling (PCmS) is advancing illness testing and monitoring. The EU-funded Project-COMFORT aims to expand existing pilots and knowledge through cross-sector collaboration. It will co-create and test logistics and tools to establish PCmS as a primary healthcare tool and a viable alternative to venous blood draws across Europe. The project will develop a validated ‘Gold Standard’ infrastructure and workflow for PCmS, including harmonised regulatory pathways, health technology assessment standards, cost-benefit models, and documented evidence to support its integration into decentralised trials. It will also engage patients to understand their preferences. Project-COMFORT will ensure access to findings and tools to facilitate the rapid adoption of PCmS in clinical studies.

Objective

Background
Health systems face a time of unprecedented change, with spiraling costs, increasing cultural disparity in access to healthcare and research, and an infrastructure that is decades old. Today, telehealth is a realistic alternative making care and research more accessible and personalised with less burden to better support the most vulnerable and under-served in our society. The ability to test and monitor for illnesses using Patient Centric micro-Sampling (PCmS) is at the centre of this reform.

Aim and main objectives
This project is designed to build upon existing pilots and knowledge, then collaborate cross-sectorially to co-create and test the logistics, infrastructure and tools required to make PCmS a core healthcare tool and an acceptable alternative to venous blood-draw across Europe. This project aligns with many IHI’s objectives focusing on cross-sectorial collaboration, emphasizing patient and end-user- centric co-design of outputs, harmonised regulatory and data generation approaches enhancing the potential of digital innovations in healthcare, while aiming to reduce the environmental footprint during the project and in final outputs to ensure that the expected long-term impact is a reachable reality that will deliver significant benefit to the community and address unmet public health needs at scale.

To achieve our objectives, we bring together a broad group of required expertise, know-how and end-users (i.e. public and patients) to form a public-private-partnership specifically equipped to tackle this challenge. This collaborative approach where the relevant stakeholders such as healthcare professionals, regulatory agencies and patients are involved and integrated to deliver solutions and innovation across healthcare systems and ensure the best chances for success and long-term positive impact from this project.

Key deliverables include:
1) An optimized, tested and validated ‘Gold Standard’ infrastructure and workflow for PCmS across Europe as a proven and reliable alternative to venipuncture
2) Harmonised and clear regulatory and HTA pathways, standards and acceptability, measures and cost-benefit models across Europe
3) Documented evidence to draw a citable ‘line in the sand’ for future research to support decisions to integrate PCmS into decentralised trials and care pathways
4) Stakeholder engagement and patient involvement models and research on preferences and acceptability for PCmS
5) Foundation for future: Enable access to the developed PCmS scientific findings, tools and assessment measures for rapid uptake and integration of PCmS approaches into decentralised clinical studies and healthcare

Expected impact:
- Patient-centric microsampling becomes an accepted alternative to the current standard of care venipuncture and the data gathered can be leveraged in healthcare planning.
- Lowered patient burden and lowered barrier to access in situations where blood samples need to be collected, whether as part of diagnosis, care plan, health monitoring etc.
- A solution to leverage high amounts of data gathered from increased testing can be explored already in this project so that it can pave the way for future research that can improve health outcomes.

Keywords

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

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HORIZON-JU-RIA - HORIZON JU Research and Innovation Actions

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) HORIZON-JU-IHI-2023-04-two-stage

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Coordinator

ARISTOTELIO PANEPISTIMIO THESSALONIKIS
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 46 342,50
Address
KEDEA BUILDING, TRITIS SEPTEMVRIOU, ARISTOTLE UNIVERSITY CAMPUS
546 36 THESSALONIKI
Greece

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Region
Βόρεια Ελλάδα Κεντρική Μακεδονία Θεσσαλονίκη
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 46 342,50

Participants (36)

Partners (19)

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