Widening Research on Pervasive and eHealth - WideHealth | WideHealth | Project | News & Multimedia | H2020 | CORDIS

The recent Covid-19 pandemic, the ageing of the population, and the increasing number of chronic patients are among the most pressing issues in our society: as a consequence, the importance of pervasive healthcare is becoming more and more important in our lives. Pervasive healthcare supports the maintenance and/or the increase of the health, wellbeing, and quality of life by utilising digital technologies: research on this topic educate experts, promote home-grown research and development, and increase general awareness of the topic and its potential on impacting the local views on technology-enabled healthcare provisioning.
The Widening Research on Pervasive and eHealth project, WideHealth, aims at enabling a new generation of researchers in the widening countries to develop and adapt novel eHealth technologies. These will be exploited in the long run in their different healthcare contexts and establish a sustainable network of knowledge research and dissemination across Europe in the Pervasive Health topic. The project includes three widening partners, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje (UKIM) from North Macedonia, as the project coordinator, Institut Jožef Stefan (JSI) from Slovenia, and Fciencias.Id - Associação para a Investigação e Desenvolvimento de Ciências (FC.ID) from Portugal; in addition, the consortium includes Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK) from Italy and Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) from Germany, as non-widening partners.
The main project objectives are:
1. Increase the scientific and technological capacity of the (widening) partners;
2. Improve the research-management skills of the widening partners, particularly the Coordinator;
3. Enhance the reputation and collaboration opportunities of the partners; and
4. Improve training capacity of the partners.
The consortium has been defined in order to allow the widening partners to enhance their scientific and technological capacity and raise their international research profile by benefitting from the non-widening countries. In particular, the Widening partners have expertise in the area of computer science and specifically in data analysis, machine learning and pervasive computing; in order to boost their expertise in the context of Pervasive Healthcare, the consortium has identified three core topics to focus on during the project: data-driven healthcare, human factors in pervasive health, and federated machine learning.

During the first year of the project, the Consortium has set the basis for the collaborations and exchanges to be performed among the different partners and has organised online seminars of different topics from areas defined in the project - Data-driven healthcare, Human factors in Pervasive Health, and Federated machine learning.
At the beginning of the project, in February 2021, a “matchmaking” online event was organised to discuss possible research collaborations between early-stage researchers (trainees) and senior researchers from other research institutions (trainers). Each early-stage researcher prepared a poster-like presentation of the research problem they are working on as a part of their studies while senior researchers ‘walked around’ the virtual venue, familiarizing themselves with the early-stage researchers’ work and discussing possible collaborations: afterwards, research collaborations have been established. Some of the established collaborations already resulted in joint publications, short-term exchanges and one joint co-supervision. During the first year of the project six joint papers were published, out of which: 3 journal publications and 3 conference/workshop publications.
Part of the WideHealth activities is the organisation of seminars and webinars, focusing on specific scientific topics as well as research management and administration. During the first year of the project, six scientific seminars were organised: these were organized as live online events, and the recordings are available on the project webpage with links to Youtube (videos) and Spotify (podcasts). Audio and video recordings of the seminars are meant as training materials for the pervasive healthcare community and are therefore made available to the public.

The impact of the project can be measured using different indicators, such as the generation of research excellence, enhancement of reputation and attractiveness, and the capability to compete for research funding. During the first year of the project, several results were achieved in this perspective. FC.ID and UKIM have organised a joint workshop in the UBICOMP’21 conference: 5 out of the 8 presented papers were authored by members of the Consortium, and 2 of them were a result of joint WideHealth collaborations. The Consortium promoted a Special Session at ETAI 2021 Conference in September 2021, on the topic of eHealth, under the leadership of UKIM. The special session totalled 5 papers from the Consortium, 2 of which were the result of joint WideHealth collaborations.
Additionally, the project allowed 9 early-stage researchers from widening partners to be involved in joint collaborations with senior researchers from non-widening partners. Senior researchers from widening partners are also involved in collaborations with non-widening partners. Furthermore, two joint project proposals were written and submitted in the first year of the project.
In February 2022, the WideHealth Thematic School on e-Health & Pervasive Technologies took place in Skopje, North Macedonia: the School, which was organised as a hybrid event, was attended by 133 participants, of which 33 in presence at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technologies (FEEIT) of UKIM. More information on the project news, events, outcomes and results can be found on the project website.

Widening Research on Pervasive and eHealth - WideHealth

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - WideHealth (Widening Research on Pervasive and eHealth - WideHealth)

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