World Brain Day is dedicated to increasing public awareness and promoting advocacy related to brain health, worldwide.
This year’s theme is ‘Brain health for all’ which focuses on sharing crucial information about brain disorders to reduce their burden for everyone.
To date, around 165 million Europeans are living with a brain disorder. Improving brain health cannot sustainably rely on the resources of any single country due to its dimension and complexity; it requires collective effort.
The EU is working on improving the health of its of citizens via an ambitious initiative that complements Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan – Healthier Together, the EU Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) Initiative. The initiative identifies effective actions and available legal and financial support across five main areas, including mental health and neurological disorders.
The EU is also supporting research and innovation projects in the brain and neurological disorders area through its Horizon Europe programme, the successor of Horizon 2020.
Under Horizon Europe Cluster 1 (health), HaDEA manages a number of projects and initiatives that help to:
- Gain a better understanding of brain function and dysfunction;
- Develop innovative methods for diagnosis, monitoring, prevention, treatment, care and support.
The MES-CoBrad project aims at improving the accuracy of diagnosis and treatment in people with complex brain disorders (CoBraD). To accomplish this goal, the project is developing an online platform which will take into account patients’ genetic material, environment, and lifestyle among other factors. This will support more accurate diagnoses and effective treatment improving personalized medicine approaches in real-world practice..
The project focuses on promoting and enabling personalised care to reduce the treatment costs of brain disorders. The goal is to demonstrate that AI-enabled prediction, prevention and intervention will make the treatment of disorders more affordable and will ease the burden on healthcare systems across Europe. A key component of ALAMEDA is the Digital Health Innovation Hub – anopen platform that will integrate and promote the project’s research findings, guidelines and evaluation results.
Background
Horizon Europe is the research and innovation programme of the EU for the period 2021-2027. The aims of Cluster 1: Health include improving and protecting the health and wellbeing of citizens of all ages by generating new knowledge, developing innovative solutions and integrating, where relevant, a gender perspective to prevent, diagnose, monitor, treat and cure diseases. Horizon 2020 (H2020) was the EU’s multiannual funding programme between 2014 and 2020.
Source: European Commission I HaDEA (https://bit.ly/3BjfFUm)