Severe mental disorders are major health burden worldwide with a large treatment gap in low- and middle- income countries (LMICs) in South Eastern Europe. Policymakers, planners and professional bodies in these countries are committed to closing the treatment gap; however they struggle to overcome basic obstacles such as funding difficulties and lack of qualified staff. IMPULSE aims to facilitate the development of effective community-based mental health care in these countries by implementing an evidence-based, easily deliverable, affordable and cost-saving intervention called DIALOG+. The intervention is a technology-assisted and based on patient-centred communication, quality of life research and solution-focused therapy. It was designed to make routine meetings between clinicians and patients structured, comprehensive and more therapeutically effective. DIALOG+ is effective in reducing clinical symptoms, improving quality of life and reducing treatment costs. IMPULSE brings together a multi-disciplinary Consortium (experts in psychiatry, psychology, implementation science, health economy and transcultural research) to conduct a mixed method, multiple case implementation study across five LMICs - Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia. IMPULSE will formulate contextually appropriate approach and optimise delivery of this intervention across different healthcare systems, thus exploring how local, organisational and national factors influence adoption, implementation, sustainability and economic costs. This process will generate new knowledge on how to best develop and organise community mental health care in LMICs through the implementation of effective and generic interventions. We will undertake a series of activities to widely disseminate IMPULSE results to maximise the impact of the research. This will include translating the findings into national implementation guidance and policies in each country.

Decades of research into Parkinson's disease (PD) have fallen short in fully comprehending its mechanisms, leaving us without a cure. Current treatments merely alleviate symptoms temporarily, but are unable to impede the progression of the disease. Clearly, PD research has hit a wall, and new approaches are needed. Recent discoveries of the involvement of the peripheral immune system in PD have sparked a groundbreaking proposition by BICEPS: PD must be considered a systemic disease with an immune response involving both brain and periphery. Thus, to revolutionize PD research, we must shift away from the neuro-centric approach of past decades and extend our focus to studying the immune system outside the brain. Furthermore, recent advancements, such as systems biology and artificial intelligence (AI)-driven data mining, diagnosis, and drug development, hold significant promise for advancing PD research. Therefore, BICEPS is uniting PD researchers, immunologists, and experts in AI and systems biology from leading European academic institutions, startup companies, and established pharmaceutical firms into a unique consortium. The primary objective is to train a new generation of PD researchers with interdisciplinary expertise in these fields. This ambitious goal will be realized through an intensive training program that encompasses cutting-edge methodologies, encourages innovation, nurtures transferable skills, and provides immersive, hands-on research experiences. Thereby, the BICEPS network aims to shape the future of PD research by adopting a fresh perspective and expediting the development of diagnostics and therapies for PD, with a particular focus on the immune system.

The aim of VASCUL-AID is to predict the risk of cardiovascular events and progression of the vascular diseases Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA) and Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD) to influence the course of disease improving the patient’s quality of life and care and assisting clinicians to make better-informed decisions involving the patient. VASCUL-AID will allow us for the first time to identify patients who are at high risk for AAA growth or PAD progression and cardiovascular events. To this end, we will deliver a clinically relevant and cost-effective trustworthy AI-driven platform (VASCUL-AID) that integrates multi-source parameters including imaging, proteomic and genomic data as well as life-style patient data from wearables to enable personalised vascular disease management. To maximise the personalised prevention strategies, VASCUL-AID leverages visualisation tools to improve clinician-patient communication and empower the patient. The VASCUL-AID platform consists of AI risk-prediction tools, a patient communication app an a clinical dashboard to support clinical decision-making. A particular emphasis is placed on ethics, to ensure beneficial implementation of AI prediction tools. In this project, we aim to (1) build an EU-wide data infrastructure, (2) develop an AI-based progression prediction tools for AAA and PAD, (3) develop criteria according to the COMET initiative to assess the effectiveness of VASCUL-AID, and (4) clinically test and show proof-of-concept for the VASCUL-AID platform. Once validated, this platform can be extended to other cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) as well. VASCUL-AID brings together 14 leading organisations (and 2 affiliated entities) consisting of clinical academic centres, institutes, universities and SMEs as well as large industry, patients organisations and policy makers that cover the full value chain to enable integration of the platform into clinical practice.