Programme Category
Programme Name
Programme Description
Horizon Europe is the European Union (EU) funding programme for the period 2021 – 2027, which targets the sectors of research and innovation. The programme’s budget is around € 95.5 billion, of which € 5.4 billion is from NextGenerationEU to stimulate recovery and strengthen the EU’s resilience in the future, and € 4.5 billion is additional aid.
Identifier Code
Call
Summary
Imaging is a crucial component of cancer clinical protocols, providing detailed morphological, structural, metabolic, and functional information. However, harnessing the full potential of the data generated through medical imaging in clinical settings remains challenging.
Clinicians often struggle to combine diverse and large-scale data into a comprehensive view of patient care, disease progression, and treatment efficacy.
The inability to seamlessly integrate and interpret diverse data sources result in suboptimal patient outcomes and inefficiencies in the delivery of healthcare.
Detailed Call Description
The integration of traditional Artificial Intelligence (AI) with medical imaging can transform healthcare, but most existing applications are still in their infancy and must overcome a number of challenges to accelerate adoption. These include AI applications being confined to single data modalities, which restricts their overall effectiveness (Monomodal Application); inadequate and insufficient data training, leading to data scarcity and a lack of generalizability, making them less reliable across diverse patient populations, including with regard to gender-sensitivity; and the lack of AI model interpretability, as many AI systems function as “black boxes,” providing little insight into their decision-making processes. This lack of transparency limits trust in the systems and their usability in clinical settings.
The goal of this Pathfinder Challenge is to create interactive GenAI autonomous agents and/or a combination of them (super-agent) that provide clinicians with a holistic end to end perspective of patient care, throughout the entire clinical pathway. These agents aim to enhance pattern identification, reduce inconsistencies and errors in diagnoses as well as improve cancer treatment. While the focus is on GenAI, we also encourage the integration of other advanced AI technologies, such as topological and geometric deep learning, neural fields, graph neural networks, etc., which can complement and enhance the robustness and effectiveness of GenAI-based solutions in addressing the challenges of cancer diagnosis and therapy.
The Challenge will support early-stage groundbreaking research projects that will develop and validate novel approaches and concepts for integrating and interpreting multimodal medical imaging and health data. Additionally, it will involve generating reliable synthetic medical data, which will also be pooled to form a common database and used for the development of advanced algorithms.
Specific Objectives
Project proposals under this Challenge should focus on one (and only one) of the following diseases: breast cancer, cervical cancer, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, lung cancer, brain cancer, stomach cancer or colorectal cancer.
Each proposal should address both the following areas (at least one sub-objective from each of the areas):
Area 1: Technological area
- GenAI-based tools for Integrating Multidimensional Multimodal health Data
- Medical Data Augmentation
- Medical Knowledge Representation and Integration
Area 2: Clinical Area
- Predictive Diagnosis
- Enhance Personalized Treatment Selection
Call Total Budget
Financing percentage by EU or other bodies / Level of Subsidy or Loan
100%
Considers proposals with an EU contribution of up to €4.000.000, as appropriate.
Thematic Categories
- Health
- Information and Communication Technologies
- Information Technology
- Research, Technological Development and Innovation
Eligibility for Participation
- Businesses
- Educational Institutions
- Legal Entities
- Other Beneficiaries
- Researchers/Research Centers/Institutions
- Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)
Eligibility For Participation Notes
In order to apply, your proposal must meet the general eligibility requirements (see Annex 2) as well as specific eligibility requirements for the Challenge (if applicable). Please check for particular elements (e.g., specific application focus or technology) in the respective Challenge chapter below.
The EIC Pathfinder Challenges support collaborative or individual research and innovation from consortia or from single legal entities established in a Member State or an Associated Country (unless stated otherwise in the specific Challenge chapter). In case of a consortium your proposal must be submitted by the coordinator on behalf of the consortium.
Consortia of two entities must be comprised of independent legal entities from two different Member States or Associated Countries. Consortia of three or more entities must include as beneficiaries at least three legal entities, independent from each other and each established in a different country as follows:
- at least one legal entity established in a Member State; and
- at least two other independent legal entities, each established in different Member States or Associated Countries.
The legal entities may for example be universities, research organisations, SMEs, startups, natural persons. In the case of single beneficiary projects, mid-caps and larger companies will not be permitted.
The standard admissibility and eligibility conditions and the eligibility of applicants from third countries are detailed in Annex 2.
Call Opening Date
Call Closing Date
National Contact Point(s)
Research and Innovation Foundation
Address: 29a Andrea Michalakopoulou, 1075 Nicosia, P.B. 23422, 1683 Nicosia
Telephone: +357 22205000
Fax: +357 22205001
Email: support@research.org.cy
Website: https://www.research.org.cy/en/
Contact Person:
Dr. Leda Skoufari – Themistou
Senior Scientific Officer
Email: leda@research.org.cy