Personalised prevention of non-communicable diseases – addressing areas of unmet needs using multiple data sources

Closed

Programme Category

EU Competitive Programmes

Programme Name

Horizon Europe (2021-2027)

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.

Programme Details

Identifier Code

HORIZON-HLTH-2024-STAYHLTH-01-05-two-stage

Call

Personalised prevention of non-communicable diseases – addressing areas of unmet needs using multiple data sources

Summary

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are responsible for the majority of the disease burden in Europe and are the leading cause of avoidable premature death. The human and financial cost of NCDs is high and expected to grow. Reducing the burden of NCDs requires a holistic approach and tackling health inequalities across the board. Preventing NCDs from developing in the first place will be at the core of successful public health programmes in the future.

Personalised prevention is the assessment of health risks for individuals based on their specific background traits to recommend tailored prevention.

Detailed Call Description

Τhe proposed research is expected to deliver on all of the following points:

  • Enable the understanding of areas of unmet need in NCDs prevention, possibly also addressing disease mechanism, management of disease progression and relapse. Providing new approaches for prevention, focussing on the digitally supported personalised dimension, that can be adopted and scaled up.
  • Devise new or improved ambitious policy and intervention options, with expected high population-wide impact on the target groups in question. To be proposed and made available for effective health promotion and disease prevention including targeted communication strategies to successfully reach out to the risk groups.
  • Design an integrated, holistic approach that includes several of the following aspects: genetic predisposition to NCDs, meta-genomics, epigenomics, the microbiome, metabolomics, sleep disorders, large cohorts, molecular profiling in longitudinal health screening, impact of lack of physical activity, novel predictive biomarker candidates, diets and nutrition, eating habits for designing customised dietary patterns (geographical variation), and the influence of choice environment on personal choices.
  • Study the ethical, legal and social aspects as well as health economics of the personalised prevention tools and programmes being developed. Consider optimal health counselling and communication to the patients/citizens. Address legal aspects of balancing the right not to know and the obligation of helping people in danger.

Furthermore, the proposed research is expected to deliver on several of the following points:

  • Develop and validate effective strategies to prevent NCDs and optimise health and well-being of citizens (including the most vulnerable). Propose the strategies to policymakers along with mechanisms to monitor their progress. The strategies need to be aligned with relevant national and European health laws and policies.
  • Provide scientific evidence on interactions between the genetic predisposition to multifactorial diseases and environmental factors or environmental triggers. Propose scientifically supported personalised prevention strategies that ensure how to modify the environmental drivers of behavioural risk factors.
  • Develop new computational tools combining and analysing comprehensive data with different dimensions to identify risk factors and modifiers. Creating procedures and algorithms to combine information from different sources (with standardised common data models) to generate risk scores for several diseases and provide health promotion recommendations for the individual as advised by healthcare professionals. Furthermore, develop advanced computational modelling techniques for predicting disease risk and predisposition (addressed together in an integrative approach) and identifying the optimal solution/intervention for different target groups and individuals.
  • Develop tools and techniques to increase the efficiency and cost- effectiveness of on the one hand interventions, adjusting their scope, characteristics and resources, and on the other hand healthcare infrastructure and how it promotes and delivers health promotion, disease prevention, and care effectively to the different population groups.
  • Design tools to collect various data to advance health promotion and disease prevention and strategies for providing omics essays for the general patient with a focus on cost-effectiveness and flexibility.
  • Determine how to optimise the benefits of physical activity, smart monitoring of physical activity and sedentary behaviour with measurable data, addressing barriers to uptake and implementation of healthy lifestyles in daily life, understanding what promotion methods work and why, behavioural science to understand healthier choice environments. Balancing the ecosystem associated with the economic, social, and health consequences of NCDs. Affordability related consideration should be taken into account to ensure accessibility of new tools and techniques.
  • Conduct data mining of real-world data and develop quantifiable and distinguishable indicators from wearables data, taking into account ‘light-weight’ AI means to ensure patient privacy and short reaction times.
  • Demonstrate with a practical prototype on a given health challenge: from multimodal data collection to identification of an effective prevention strategy to be tested and validated for one or several NCDs.

Call Total Budget

€50.00 million

Financing percentage by EU or other bodies / Level of Subsidy or Loan

100%

EU contribution per project: €8.00 and €12.00 million

 

Thematic Categories

  • Health
  • Research, Technological Development and Innovation
  • Social Affairs & Human Rights

Eligibility for Participation

  • Central Government
  • International Organisations
  • Legal Entities
  • NGOs
  • Non Profit Organisations
  • Other Beneficiaries
  • Private Bodies
  • Researchers/Research Centers/Institutions
  • Semi-governmental organisations
  • State-owned Enterprises

Eligibility For Participation Notes

In recognition of the opening of the US National Institutes of Health’s programmes to European researchers, any legal entity established in the United States of America is eligible to receive Union funding.

If projects use satellite-based earth observation, positioning, navigation and/or related timing data and services, beneficiaries must make use of Copernicus and/or Galileo/EGNOS (other data and services may additionally be used).

Call Opening Date

30/03/2023

Call Closing Date

19/09/2023

National Contact Point(s)

Research and Innovation Foundation
29a Andrea Michalakopoulou, 1075 Nicosia,
P.B. 23422, 1683 Nicosia
Telephone: +357 22205000
Fax: +357 22205001
Email: support@research.org.cy
Websitehttps://www.research.org.cy/en/

Contact Persons:
George Christou
Scientific Officer
Email: gchristou@research.org.cy

Ioannis Theodorou
Scientific Officer
Telephone: +357 22 205 038
Email: itheodorou@research.org.cy

(Publish Date: 06/04/2023-for internal use only)

EU Contact Point

European Commission, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation

https://ec.europa.eu/info/departments/research-and-innovation_en#contact