New Research Project Partners Wanted

There appears to be a new research project arriving over the horizon. We think we’re well placed to offer the EU an attractive consortium capable of addressing FP7 Call 6 Objective 5.3 described in the call as follows:

b) Development of ICT tools, services and specialised infrastructure for the biomedical researchers to support at least two of the following three activities: i) to share data and knowledge needed for a new integrative research approach in medicine (biomedical informatics), ii) to share or jointly develop multiscale models and simulators, iii) to create collaborative environments supporting this highly multidisciplinary field. When necessary, computing power and data management could be sought through access to existing advanced grid infrastructures as well as high performance computing resources such as the emerging petascale computing facilities. New tools, services and applications will also be evaluated on their effectiveness and their ability to interface with existing medical research infrastructures. Their targeted services will facilitate the clinical use of computer
based organ and disease models as well as biomedical data. These tools and services will complement and be compatible with existing methods and standards (terminologies, ontologies, mark-up languages) like those used by the Network of Excellence –VPH NoE (FP7-ICT-call 2). International Cooperation in this field is encouraged. The objective is to support at least one IP to be funded under b).

How are we qualified?

Clinical Research Hub which we intend launching early in the new year. This service builds on work carried out under Avert-IT – infrastructure, methodologies, software etc and will provide a global capability for patient data aggregation and analysis, collaborative research, clinical governance and deliver a basis for evidence based medicine.

Clinical partners in Avert-IT are university hospitals in Sweden, Lithuania, Germany, Italy, Spain and UK and our ICT partner is National eScience Centre at Glasgow University. Our clinical partners are keen to build on Avert-IT with new research into wave form data – particularly EEG and ECG to understand more about Intensive Care Adverse Events and longer term quality of outcomes.

To complete the picture

we need partners who can contribute in at least two new dimensions:

• Remote monitoring – we need to collect data from patients in remote locations, and probably mobile.
• Petascale computing – collecting, aggregating and researching minute by minute data from ,000s of patients will require large storage and processing resource.

Time frame for the application is something like:

• Selection of consortium members – end December 2009
• Submission of grant proposal – end April 2010
• Acceptance/rejection by the EU – September 2010
• Project start – January 2011

We’re open to offers from suitably qualified companies. Interested parties are invited to contact steve.reeves@avantrasara.com.