ENRICHME tackles the progressive decline of cognitive capacity in the ageing population proposing an integrated platform for Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) with a mobile service robot for long-term human monitoring and interaction, which helps the elderly to remain independent and active for longer. The system will contribute and build on recent advances in mobile service robotics and AAL, exploiting new non-invasive techniques for physiological and activity monitoring, as well as adaptive Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), to provide services in support to mental fitness and social inclusion. The system will enable caregivers and medical staff to identify evolving trends of cognitive impairments and to detect immediate emergencies. ENRICHME will use new qualitative models for rich yet compact representations of daily life activities. It will also identify humans in order to provide personalized services for elderly living with other persons. Novel context-aware HRI will provide tools for cognitive stimulation and social inclusion, which improve over time by learning from and adapting to the state of the user. A professional infrastructure of networked care will widen the social sphere of intervention in support of elderly and caregivers. ENRICHME includes multi-disciplinary research in geriatrics, gerontology and gero-technology, enabling further studies in social sciences and neuropsychology. Thanks to a modular implementation, which limits costs and allows for maximal flexibility, the system will be tested in 2 separate AAL labs and validated for 1 year in 3 different elderly housing facilities across Europe. Significant impact is expected by prolonging the independent living at home of elderly who need constant monitoring. Their quality of life will be improved by dedicated services for cognitive stimulation and social inclusion. Relevant stakeholders in the project will ensure further impact and economic exploitation of the proposed technologies for healthy ageing.

In order to compete globally, Europe has to innovate and develop nanomedicines and medical technologies with high value and high technological content, well protected IP, and ensuring both a clinical need and commercial opportunities of all new innovations. Technically, this will be achieved by combining elements of key enabling technologies like nanotechnologies, photonics, robotics, advanced materials and information technologies to get smart medical devices and smart nanomedicines. However, the translation of the preclinical proof of concepts to the market via clinical validation, regulatory approval, and approval for reimbursement by the healthcare systems, requires a more integrated and streamlined ecosystem with less barriers between stakeholders and steps. Following their successful experience in the past 12 years of development in nanomedicine and medical technologies, ETPN and the seven other partners of NOBEL are merging their networks to set up a coherent, robust and unique ecosystem where information flow will improve awareness all along the value chain right up to the market access. It develops interactions, cooperation and implementation of complementary actions at local, regional, national, European and even international levels. The building of this ecosystem is based on two main pillars: a joint vision of the strategy for the future (roadmapping) and a high cohesion and interrelationship among the members of the ecosystem. One of the most significant and impactful outputs of this inclusive efficient ecosystem is the tangible acceleration of the development and industrialization of innovative SMEs in nanomedicine and medical technologies. This will impact the renaissance of EU economy by creating jobs and value in Europe. NOBEL will be unique in building the most efficient network of connections and synergies all along the value chain of Nanomedicine and healthcare technologies in Europe.

DoCBox aims to develop a new toolbox of fast and easy-to-implement behavioural, neuroimaging and neurophysiological assessments to accurately assess and diagnose patients suffering from a disorder of consciousness (DoC), allowing for a more comprehensive examination and better management of this vulnerable population. This toolbox will respond to the society needs regarding the evaluation of patients with DoC as it appropriately responds to the rigid time constraints of clinical settings, which are one of the biggest limitations for an accurate diagnosis. This project aims to enhance interdisciplinary research on DoC via an exchange of knowledge and international scientific cooperation to translate and validate the tools (e.g., behavioral scales, pipelines) that will be included in this toolbox. This collaboration between the partners underpins the credibility and feasibility of three research objectives: 1) Provide new bedside assessment tools to refine and optimize the detection of consciousness signs in post-comatose patients; 2) Identify the most accurate neurophysiological and neuroimaging biomarkers of consciousness states and develop novel easy-to-use software to implement these analyses in clinical settings; 3) Engage informal and formal caregivers in the diagnosis of DoC patients. This will ultimately result in guidelines and policy recommendations for improvement of DoC patients’ diagnosis and thus care. The proposed exchange program aims to bring together a large international and interdisciplinary consortium of 17 partners (EU and non-EU countries) including researchers and other professionals with all necessary skills, permitting to tackle the challenges faced by professionals when studying and caring for DoC patients. The benefits for Europe are the intersector and interdisciplinary massive data collected by this consortium, which will allow a major progress in the understanding of (disorders of) consciousness.