CrowdHEALTH at the AEGLE conference!

As CrowdHEALTH project coordinator, I received the invitation to participate in the conference organized by one of our ‘sister project’ AEGLE about ‘Demonstrating Results of Big Data initiatives in Healthcare’.

Apart from presenting the CrowdHEALTH project objectives, partners, and work achieved to the date, I presented several videos produced by our technical partners. I also participated in the final panel session. But I also had the chance to listen to great presentations.

For example, Jos Dumorter from Time-Lex made an interesting presentation about EU regulations regarding the use or re-use of data for research purposes. He mentioned the difficulties faced by Member States, where different interpretations and practices come into play. Actually the team is preparing a summary of all EU MS regulations in this respect plus Norway and Switzerland, which should soon be available on the AEGLE project website. He also warned against confusing ethical approval and GDPR.

The next presentation I attended was given by Katerina Vaporidi from the University of Crete. She gave details regarding the CDA developed by the AEGLE project and how it works for physicians in their daily monitoring of patients in intensive care, in particular regarding ventilation and nutrition. She also summarised what the platform and the use of data brings to the medical community, how researchers may use it and the near future possibility to have access to a demo in which patient data will be available.

Her presentation was followed by a discussion about the value of data analytics and the project offering by means of an early Health Technology Assessment. This presentation was delivered by Jos Aarts and Ken Redekop from the Erasmus University of Rotterdam.

Unfortunately, I could not attend all presentations, but I had the opportunity to discuss during breaks and network during lunch with other speakers. Actually I found out that CrowdHEALTH has much more ‘brother and sister’ projects than I could imagine. I hope that we can stay in touch and exchange knowledge to progress towards a more global application and benefit of big data and health in Europe, avoiding reinventing the wheel each time.

Pictures and the video of our presentations (including CrowdHEALTH’s) will soon be available on AEGLE’s website, so stay tuned…

Lydia Montandon
CrowdHEALTH Project Coordinator