COVID-X: Humanitas among the partners of the European funding program
Humanitas is also among the partners of COVID-X, a program funded through HORIZON2020, the European Commission’s fund for Research and Innovation, with 20 million investments.
COVID-X is a two-year acceleration program, during which 4 million euros will be invested in projects focused on the use of Artificial Intelligence in data analysis to tackle the pandemic caused by the Sars-CoV2 virus.
Thanks to the resources put in place by its Artificial Intelligence Center – a multidisciplinary team of data scientists, doctors and managers – Humanitas was able to make the cut out of 250 proposals and together with other European partners will use the most sophisticated technologies to fight the virus.
COVID-X: The program
The COVID-19 pandemic proved to be particularly aggressive in 2020 and has caused more than 250,000 deaths in Europe since February. For this reason, the European Commission has considered it appropriate to develop programs that use new technologies and artificial intelligence to fight the pandemic. Therefore, the aim of COVID-X is to bridge the gap still present between the digital sector and the health systems of the European Union countries. In order to achieve this goal, both tech companies and health service providers will be financed and thus will be able to propose clinical solutions that, with the analysis of data through A.I., can accelerate and improve the processes of diagnosis, prognosis and the follow-up of patients.
Technological research and the integration of clinical practice and data culture have always been priorities for Humanitas. For this reason, within the Covid-X program, we will deploy a team specialized in Artificial Intelligence that has already supported physicians during the first wave of the pandemic with projects dedicated to emergency management.
“Artificial Intelligence today is a key asset because it allows us to deduce information from thousands of data very quickly. Now more than ever clinical research need to find effective solutions faster to deal with emergencies. We are confident that this project will lead to the sharing of technological resources, data and expertise that will help us achieve higher standards of healthcare for all”.
Victor Savevski – Chief Innovation Officer of Humanitas, Principal Investigator and AI Center Manager.
The investment program will be addressed to projects developing TRL 7+ technologies that have obtained the CE mark. Both single players (EU Tech SMEs / Start-Up) whose projects have been validated at one of the clinical partners COVID-X, and multiplayer (i.e. Tech Providers who have worked with Healthcare provider able to validate the project) will be accepted. The selected projects will follow an acceleration program able to provide technical support, consulting and business mentoring, which will help them diffuse through the market quickly. Participants will also have access to COVID-X Sandbox, a platform that will incorporate data collection on Covid-19.
COVID-X foresees the launch of 2 Open Call: the first Open Call will be in early December 2020, with a deadline at the end of January 2021.