Brussels, 29 Jul 2004
The European Commission is providing 6.4 million euro to a new Network of Excellence under the Information Society Technologies (IST) priority of the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) to help combat major diseases such as cancer, brain and cardiovascular diseases and diabetes.
By developing the new field of biopattern and bioprofile analysis, the BIOPATTERN project will seek to boost individualised healthcare for disease prevention, diagnosis and treatment. Furthermore, by bringing together 31 institutions from ten European countries, BIOPATTERN aims to reduce current fragmentation in this area and make Europe a world leader in e-Healthcare.
'A biopattern is the basic information - i.e. pattern - that provides clues about underlying clinical evidence for diagnosis and treatment of diseases. A bioprofile is a personal 'fingerprint' that fuses together a person's current and past medical history, biopattern and prognosis,' explained the consortium in a statement.
The BIOPATTERN project will therefore develop groundbreaking techniques for the analysis of bio-profiles and make the information available though online secured databases providing libraries and processing facilities for intelligent remote diagnosis and consultation.
'The grand vision', explained Professor Emmanuel Ifeachor, from the University of Plymouth, 'is to develop a pan-European, coherent and intelligent analysis of an individual's bioprofile; to make the analysis of this bioprofile remotely accessible to patients and clinicians, and to exploit the bioprofile to combat major diseases.'
By moving from 'local solutions' to 'European wide solutions', this project, added Professor David Lowe from Aston University in the UK, 'provides a rare opportunity for developing future, truly personalised and active healthcare management systems.'
It is hoped that in the future, the scope of the facilities will be extended to mobile telemedicine.
For further information, please visit:
http:///www.biopattern.org/portal/
Item source: http://dbs.cordis.lu/cgi-bin/srchidadb?C ALLER=NHP_EN_NEWS&ACTION=D&SESSION=&RCN= EN_RCN_ID:22390