dHealth (2021-2026)

The FNR-PEARL programme supporting the Digital Medicine Group will develop digital health concepts for Luxembourg through a joint research programme involving the UL, the Luxembourg Centre of Systems Biomedicine (LCSB), the Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH), and the Centre Hospitalier de Luxembourg (CHL). Parkinson disease (PD) will serve as an optimal model disease to develop and utilise the potential of digitalisation. The novel digital health pathways will then be transferred to subsequent diseases. The emerging field of digital health technologies is the driver for digital medicine. Its success is based on an interdisciplinary understanding of digital health application development and management. To meet these challenges the Digital Medicine group will is composed of experts in the field of medicine, data science, ELSA, Health Economy, IT-engineering and Social Science.

The vision of dHealth is to create a new “ecosystem of digital medicine” by developing a “digital health triangle” consisting of a) an IT-platform supported integrated healthcare model for PD, b) new patient-centred outcome parameters by wearable devices, and c) predictive data modelling for individualised patient care.

Figure: Digital Health Triangle: Digital medicine and health applications require better objective outcomes provided by new patient-centred healthcare technologies that have to be integrated into the medical application knowledge, workflows and communication requirements of all stakeholders.

The Digital medicine group will address the following topics:

• Clinical evaluation and validation of innovative real-life target parameters derived from clinical-grade wearables for PD. Wearable sensors providing objective outcome measures will be tested in patients under laboratory and real-life (e.g. home monitoring) settings. Different sensor-types addressing the major body functions according to the international Classification of Functioning Disability and Health (ICF) will be evaluated ranging from gait and mobility, cardio-vascular function, breathing and sleep.
• Digital HealthCare applications. Wearable sensors providing objective outcomes will be integrated into the trans-sectoral healthcare workflow to support personalised clinical decisions in PD.
• Connectivity of real-life patients and their medical data in PD. Generate innovative digital health pathways for PD patients including the implementation of wearable sensors and apps, as well as digitally connecting integrated healthcare provider in Luxembourg.
• Outcomes generated by clinical-grade wearables for PD. The project will focus on developing and evaluating sensor-technologies measuring disease-related functional impairment in PD, such as sensor-based gait analysis, cardiopulmonary regulation, cognitive function and sleep patterns. Technical and clinical validation of the distinct technologies will be conducted to prove their technology readiness for clinical applications.
• Personalised Intelligence developed using “Digital Health pathways” for personalised medicine in PD. The usability, applicability, integration into multidisciplinary care concepts and health-economic efficiency will be analysed and individualised data prediction models will be generated to provide personalised clinical decision support for PD patient care.

Funding and Partner Institutions: FNR, LCSB, LIH, CHL, IT for Translational Medicine (ITTM) (Luxembourg), Portabiles HealthCare Technologies (P-HCT) (Germany), Refinio (Germany);

DIGIPD (2021-2024)

DIGIPD is a European funded project (ERA-PERMED (H2020)) with partners from Germany, France and Luxembourg.

This DIGIPD project is validating digital biomarkers to improve individualised diagnosis and prognosis for Parkinson patients. To better predict disease progression and therefore disease management, impairment of  gait, voice and face movement is measured using digital technology to adapt treatment. Depending on disease progression patients can be stratified into subgroups for clinical trials to revea new or better drugs.

The project is coordinated by the Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing SCAI.

Funding and Partner Institutions:

• LCSB
• Clinical Research Center for Neurosciences at the Institut du Cerveau et de la moelle epiniere, E-health research at Telecom SudParis, France
• Fraunhofer SCAI, Portabiles HealthCare Technologies (P-HCT), Germany
• University Namur, Belgium