We would like to congratulate VASCUL-AID with the award of a €6.4m Horizon grant to develop trustworthy AI-driven tools that help predict vascular disease risk and progression!
VASCUL-AID consortium & Horizon Grant
The VASCUL-AID consortium consists of 17 interdisciplinary partners including six medical centers across Europe, with Associate Prof. Kak Khee Yeung from Amsterdam-UMC as the main coordinator. This project has received €6.4m funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme to develop innovative tools deploying Artificial Intelligence to be implemented in the clinical practice to manage patients with vascular diseases.
What is the project about?
Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death globally, taking an estimated 17.9 million lives each year. Advances in the field are mostly focused on cardiology while vascular diseases are often neglected. Until now. The aim of VASCUL-AID is to develop AI-powered tools to predict the risk of cardiovascular events and the progression of the vascular diseases Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA) and Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD) to influence the course of disease. This is to improve the patient’s quality of life and care and assist clinicians to make better-informed decisions involving the patient.
How did FFUND help?
The team of FFUND was delighted to work with this innovative consortium to translate their ideas into a comprehensive project application for Horizon. Under the guidance of project leader & team manager Ivan Ramirez-Moral, a team of PhD-level consultants worked together to bring this project to a success.
Ivan Ramirez-Moral: “The two-stage preparation of the grant application demanded great coordination of the 17 partners in order to get an excellent proposal before the deadline(s). Regardless, the process progressed smoothly. I am extremely happy with the work we delivered and the added value we had to this seasoned consortium of expertise, ranging from vascular surgery, to vascular medicine, trustworthy AI, multi-omics data experts, software engineers and health economics.”
Kak Khee Yeung: “FFUND provided top quality senior advisors like Ivan, who immediately knows what I mean and how to put it in the grant proposal. FFUND provide a strong draft version based on your proposal, which we could easily finetune into a final version. FFUND then made the figures and layout more appealing and made sure that all the boxes were ticked for the funding call.”
“My ultimate dream is that we will provide an easily accessible, well-functioning European big data platform to use AI, and that we can provide accurate prediction algorithm on cardiovascular disease progression which will be used on the clinic. I’m already proud that our consortium is formed and that we came this far together. I would even be more proud if we successfully execute the project as proposed.”
