The 30th month meeting and the Industry Forum were virtual. The COVID-19 has changed the way we work and the way people meet. This affect also the Back-Up consortium: the periodical meeting was supposed to be in Leeds, UK, but it was celebrated entirely on-line.
“It’s a reasonable choice for the safety of all the members of our consortium”, states Project Coordinator Helios de Rosario.
Due to their prominent role in healthcare-related research many of the project partners actively fought against the COVID-19 pandemic, and to reduce its direct and indirect impacts on patients and society with several initiatives from face masks to vaccine research.
“During the last four months project activity didn’t stop but if suffered some delays”, continues de Rosario.
The delay was due principally to the fact that data collecting in a sanitary environment was essentially impossible during COVID-19
That is why the consortium agreed to ask for a four-month extension of project, that will end by April 2021.
Data collection is nearly finished and from now on Back-UP platform is bound to integrate all the modules that have been set up during the first part of the project with new data information. In any case data from patience will continue being fundamental to feed the platform and improve the outputs.
INDUSTRY FORUM
In a parallel session, the project was presented to a wide and various audience during a webinar organized by EMPIRICA titled “AI in Healthcare: The Back-UP project showcase and Industry Forum”.
During the event, the clinical decision support system was presented to an interested audience with almost 70 registrations from clinicians, hospitals, industry or healthcare informaticians, who learnt how Back-Up partners are collaborating to improve well-being and return to work for patients with Neck and Low Back Pain (NLBP).
A cloud-based scalable approach is used for data sharing, modelling and execution. Multidisciplinary prognostic models are deployed in MULTI-X, a research cloud platform developed at the University of Leeds. By Interoperating with MULTI-X prognostic models are leveraged by:
• Antari Home Care, an established eHealth platform, developed by the technology multinational GMV.
• A Patient Stratification Web App developed at Keele University, designed to integrate the NHS Primary Care systems.
• A Smartphone App developed by the SelfBACK EU project feeds the Back-UP ecosystem with patient monitoring and self-reported information.
“Back-Up team is stronger and more motivate after the COVID-19 emergency “, states Giuseppe Caprara, Innovation Manager at IBV. “Now it’s time to maximize the impact of project outputs, that is why we are going to increase dissemination activities in the las stretch of the project”, concludes.
For more information about Back-UP, please visit project web page http://backup-project.eu/
