CoroPrevention

Research project funded by the H2020 program

Background: Coronary heart disease (CHD) remains the leading cause of premature death worldwide. CHD affects both men and women and of all deaths before the age of 75 years in Europe, 42% in women and 38% in men are due to CHD. Thus, prevention of CHD morbidity and mortality is a major challenge in clinical medicine. Cardiovascular diseases cost the EU economy almost €294 billion a year, and are projected to rise with both the ageing population and the cost of novel treatments. European and global CHD burden remains unsustainable. Better risk stratification tools and personalized care of patients are needed for reducing morbidity and mortality of CHD and the associated economic burden.To this end, leading European experts will initiate a prospective clinical trial “CoroPrevention” financed by the European Union Horizon 2020 funding program.

Study Goal: A prospective multicenter clinical trial to demonstrate whether in high risk CHD patients a personalized prevention program will result in decreased risk of CV event as well as the economic value of a personalized prevention program. To this aim 15.000 patients around Europe will be screened to randomize 2.000 high risk patients by a biomarker score.

The project will start in 2020 and has a duration of 7 years.

Hasselt University is partner in this project by the participation of

• The “Expertise centre for Digital Media (EDM)”  is the ICT research institute of Hasselt University. The digital research will be under supervision of prof. dr. Karin Coninx.
• The “Mobile Health Unit (MHU)” is the Expertise centre for mobile health applications of the ‘Limburg Clinical Research Center’. The clinical research will be under supervision of prof. dr. Paul Dendale, also cardiologist at Jessa Ziekenhuis.
• Faculty of Medicine and Life Sciences – Behavioral & clinical psychology research, supervised by prof. dr. Hanne Kindermans.

Hasselt University, together with the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and the University of Oulu in Finland will co-develop the interactive applications supporting the Personalized Prevention Program by integrating their own developed mHealth solutions. One of the basic goals of this prevention application is improving patient empowerment by placing patients at the center of all their health related decisions. User-centered design methods and co-creation are valuable engineering approaches in this context.

Partners:

20 different European project partners make up the project consortium, ranging from universities, hospitals, companies and patient organizations. The lead partner of the project is TAMPERE UNIVERSITY in Finland.