In addressing health risks associated with heatwaves, air pollution, wildfire emissions, and pollen, the implementation of comprehensive, transformative adaptation remains largely unreported in Europe.

HOPE is an associated partner in HealthIntelAct, a research initiative funded by Horizon Europe through the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions – Doctoral Networks.

At the heart of HealthIntelAct are 17 fellows pursuing PhD trajectories, each working on groundbreaking research projects focused on critical challenges within three key areas: People, Planet, and Prosperity. These interdisciplinary projects, spanning multiple countries and sectors, aim to develop actionable solutions for inclusive, sustainable, and resilient health systems.

Funded by the European Union under grant No. 101168576. Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union.

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In addressing health risks associated with heatwaves, air pollution, wildfire emissions, and pollen, the implementation of comprehensive, transformative adaptation remains largely unreported in Europe.

Running from 1 November 2024 to 31 October 2028, healthRiskADAPT is a Horizon Europe project aiming to develop and implement a health risk assessment system for the Mediterranean, Alpine and Continental regions. Its contents and tools will be in line with Climate-ADAPT described adaptation support tool.

By inegrating technical, nature-based, and social solutions, the project aims to empower local authorities to assess vulnerabilities, prioritise actions, and enhance preparedness. This comprehensive approach includes developing user-friendly toolkits and engaging stakeholders to ensure effective implementation.

In the project, HOPE will support various activities, including the creation of use scenarios, the development of a vision for adaptation strategies, the development of communication campaigns, stakeholder engagement, and communication and dissemination activities.

Read more and discover healthRiskADAPT website.

Follow the project on Linkedin: healthRiskADAPT.

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

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Empowering Young Patients (EYP) is a 24-month project funded by the Commission’s Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Programme (CERV) under the call ‘Rights of the child and children’s participation’. In response to the challenges children and adolescents face in hospital settings, EYP seeks to promote their inclusion and participation in civic life within hospitals.

The project kicked off activities in January 2025. For the next two years, five partners (Junior Achievement – Italy, Project School, Action Aid – Italy, Officine Buone, and HOPE) will work to benchmark best practices in participative processes involving young patients, develop educational resources (particularly fostering life and civic skills) for children undergoing long-term care, promote policy dialogues and advocacy, and build communities of knowledge.

HOPE will support various tasks, including conducting a needs analysis at the EU level, stakeholder outreach, drafting policy recommendations, and communications activities.

Be sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn, we will have plenty to share!

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values programme under grant agreement no. 101190329.

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The inaugural meeting of the KEEPCARING project consortium, led by Amsterdam University Medical Centers (AUMC) and involving 20 partners, took place in July 2024.  The project’s objective is to (re-)build the wellbeing and resilience of healthcare workers in European hospitals in the surgical pathways, and to promote onboarding and retention by systematically researching factors and signals of job stress and novel mitigating solutions. Using a co-creation approach, a multi-faceted solution package (non-digital, digital, and AI-supported) will be developed to prevent burnout among (aspirant) healthcare professionals on the individual, team, and organisational level. Stress is the biggest factor attributing to burnout among hospital healthcare workers.

KEEPCARING is a 4-year project financed by the Horizon Europe Framework Programme further to the call HORIZON-HLTH-2023-CARE-04 ‘Resilience and Mental Wellbeing of the Health and Care workforce project’. The consortium is composed of leading universities, hospitals, research organisations, SMEs offering digital solutions, and European associations representing hospitals and healthcare workers.

HOPE’s role will be to support tasks around dissemination, communication and stakeholder engagement including the definition of an effective strategy and framework and key messages for different target groups. Alliances and collaborations will be formed with stakeholders including policymakers, employers, social partners, CSOs,  technology providers, scientific, medical, and student communities. Focus groups and external experts will be involved in the definition of the most suitable sustainability and exploitation strategy.

You can follow KEEPCARING on LinkedIn and visit the project website for in-depth project information and news!

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 101137244.

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FLASH, a 4-year project funded by Horizon Europe, held its inaugural meeting on 13 and 14 February 2023 in Verona, Italy. The kick-off meeting was hosted by the Università degli Studi di Verona, the project coordinators.

One of the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic is the importance of flexibility in the funding and organisation of health systems. European countries responded quickly to this extreme event, by expanding the number of financial resources available for health care and reallocating financial and human resources. However, there are several other challenges for healthcare systems that require efficient and flexible financing mechanisms to be successfully addressed.

FLASH will undertake a comprehensive analysis of healthcare financing mechanisms in Europe and, by employing a wide range of methodological approaches, it aims to provide evidence for the ability of current financing mechanisms and contracts to address such challenges and to study solutions that may yield more effective, efficient, and equitable health care systems.

The project brings together 16 partners (including HOPE) from 9 European countries and it intends to be a game-changer in the European integrated healthcare system. The consortium includes universities, research centres, non-profit organisations, and institutions involved in the organisation and provision of healthcare in several European countries. HOPE will contribute mainly to dissemination- and policy-related tasks.

Read more and discover FLASH website, and follow FLASH on Twitter @EUFlashproject and LinkedIn!

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 101095424.

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On 26 January 2023 DIOPTRA, a Horizon Europe project, kicked off in Athens and online. Over the next four years, HOPE will be part of the 28-partner project consortium coordinated by the Institute of Communication and Computer Systems (ICCS), which focuses on early dynamic screening for colorectal cancer (CRC).

Statistics show that colorectal cancer is the third most common tumour in men and the second in women, accounting for 10% of all tumours worldwide. It ranks second in cancer-related deaths at 9.4%, after lung cancer. While CRC is now considered to be a highly preventable disease, several factors, such as long waiting times for colonoscopies, a lack of robust infrastructure for sample analysis, and patient-related barriers (such as fear, socio-demographic, psychosocial, economic, or geographic) deter systematic monitoring and follow-up.

In this context, DIOPTRA aspires to become a driving force in creating change in colorectal cancer screening and everyday medical practice through accessible and non-invasive risk estimation, employing straightforward liquid biopsies to stratify citizens in need of a definitive assessment. Via DIOPTRA, screening and early detection may become faster, more precise, personalised, accessible, and affordable, breaking the path to better health.

Against the backdrop of taxing procedures hindering citizens from seeking screening on a scheduled basis and the lack of EU-wide standardised screening, DIOPTRA aims to introduce a front-line clinical decision support tool that will consider risk factors and protein biomarkers to aid the identification of high-risk cases in actual need of a colonoscopy.

The DIOPTRA consortium consists of 28 partners from 15 countries, including universities (medical and technical), clinical partners such as hospitals, companies specialised in innovation, AI, data security, legal aspects, and biological data analysis, policymakers, and a European organisation (HOPE). Our role will consist in supporting the project’s dissemination, communication, and policy aims.

DIOPTRA website: https://www.dioptra-project.eu/.

Follow DIOPTRA on Twitter and LinkedIn!

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 101096649.

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When drafting and approving the current EU Framework for Research and Innovation, Horizon Europe, the European Commission introduced a new funding stream: 5 missions to find “concrete solutions to some of our greatest challenges,” and deliver tangible results by 2030.

In the case of lung cancer (LC), early detection can help reduce mortality by shifting the focus away from the late-stage, largely incurable profile of the disease to the early stage when more options are available to improve patients’ outcomes and quality of life. However, current methods, like Low-Dose Computed Tomography (LDCT), are not administered with sufficient precision. This is due in part to an incomplete picture of the risk factors and cellular processes associated with the onset and prognosis of lung cancer. While the high-risk link between tobacco smoking and LC has long been established, we know less about other contributing factors connected to increasing age, indoor and outdoor pollutants, multi-morbidities, genes, and differences in biological pathways.

From 2023 to 2027, LUCIA will work to contribute to the EU Mission Cancer along with other projects and researchers across Europe. We will focus on the risks associated with developing Lung Cancer and its subtypes, as well as the methods best suited for prompt diagnoses.

The approach includes:

• using data health, lifestyle, and environment data from medical records, biobanks, and from large-scale epidemiological and clinical studies;
• using AI, imagine, and wearables, among other technologies, to investigate the impact and interplay between genetic predispositions, lifestyle factors, and environmental stressors in the development of lung cancer;
• investigating cellular pathways adjusted to lung cancer subtypes;
• developing Value-Based Care Models to provide data-driven recommendations to guide screening recommendations; and
• contributing to the creation of new guidelines that identify evidence-backed risk factors.

LUCIA’s 22-member consortium is led by Technion University (Israel). It includes partners from across Europe specialising in lung cancer research, diagnostic technologies, AI ethics and legal frameworks, and EU policy. In addition, four implementing hospitals from Belgium (Walloon region), Latvia, and Spain (Andalusia and Basque regions), will be involved.

HOPE is leading work package 6, which oversees the LUCIA’s communication and dissemination activities, as well as the project’s potential contributions.

Be sure to follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram to learn more about our research and findings over the next four years!

Read more and discover LUCIA website.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 101096473.

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PROJECT NEWS & UPDATES

ABOUT SAFEST

On 1 June 2022, HOPE and consortium partners kicked off SAFEST, a four-year project funded under the new cycle of the EU’s framework for research and innovation, Horizon Europe.

When considering surgical safety, SAFEST will look at the entire journey before, during, and after surgery (often referred to as perioperative safety and care). Especially considering how several studies have shown that most adverse events linked to surgery occur outside the operating room.

Our project seeks to play a decisive role in improving patient safety and it will do so by (1) identifying and agreeing on a unified set of perioperative practices based on evidence, and (2) promoting their implementation across Europe involving healthcare professionals, patients, and other stakeholders.

The main objective is to improve adherence to evidence-based standardised patient safety practices in perioperative care by 15% and reduce the frequency of surgical complications by 8% after 18 months of a multicomponent intervention.

SAFEST 10-member consortium is led by Fundación Avedis Donabedian in Barcelona and comprises research institutions, hospitals in The Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, and Czechia, and policy organisations. HOPE will lead tasks on communications and contribute to other Work Packages with surveys, as well as help identify existing perioperative standards as part of a multi-disciplinary group.

Be sure to follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn, or check our website for interesting blog posts, in-depth project information, and news!

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 101057825.

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UPDATE

On 17 November 2025, the RE-SAMPLE project held its closing event on the EU Health Policy Platform. We presented the outcomes of the project on real-world data monit oring and AI for personalised digital care for people with chronic conditions!

If you missed it, you can watch the recording here!

Discover our end-of-project video!

Real-world data monitoring and AI for personalised care model in European hospitals

HOPE is part of the consortium of the large-scale European project RE-SAMPLE, coordinated by the University of Twente. The project is working on making use of real-world data monitoring and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to improve our understanding of COPD and comorbidity (two or more chronic conditions). The aim is to ensure that patients with complex chronic conditions receive the right care at the right time. This type of care focuses on the individual instead of solely the illness. This innovative eHealth technology will be implemented in three countries with hundreds of patients diagnosed with COPD and comorbidity.

The number of chronic conditions in Europe is on the rise, particularly as life expectancy increases. Meanwhile, health care systems are not yet sufficiently equipped to treat patients suffering from a combination of chronic conditions. “In other words: patients with multiple complex chronic conditions are sometimes sent from pillar to post”, Dr. Monique Tabak of the University of Twente explains. Tabak is conducting research into personalised eHealth technology and is the coordinator for the project. UT Researchers in the fields of cyber security and the evaluation of healthcare technology will also be involved.

Three test hospitals

The researchers will begin at three test locations representing the various hospital systems in Europe. Hundreds of patients from hospitals in Italy and Estonia and the Medisch Spectrum Twente (MST) hospital in Enschede will be participating in the project. The personalised and tailor-made healthcare for these patients will be offered in the form of a virtual companionship programme. Roessingh Research and Development (RRD) is developing the requirements and service model for this programme and is investigating its impact. The first step has been to combine existing data from clinical trials with the collection of new real-world data, including monitoring by sensors. For example, patients keep track of data relating to their symptoms using an app on their phones, then “A team of experts in the field of data and AI, healthcare professionals, and patients themselves will collaborate. Healthcare decisions are only made by this shared decision-making triangle so the patient will play a big role,” explains Tabak.

About RE-SAMPLE

The RE-SAMPLE project, funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, is a partnership between multidisciplinary partners from the Netherlands (University of Twente, Medisch Spectrum Twente, Roessingh Research and Development) and other European countries (Belgium, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain). University of Twente is in charge of the coordination of the project and various departments are involved: Biomedical Signals and Systems (Monique Tabak), Health Technology and Services Research (Anke Lenferink), and Cyber Security (Andreas Peter).

RE-SAMPLE website

Follow RE-SAMPLE:

on Twitter: @resample_h2020

on LinkedIn: RE-SAMPLE Project

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 965315.

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