CVDLINK project beginsArtificial Intelligence Should Improve Cardiovascular Care

18 April 2024, by Heiko Fuchs

Photo: CVDLINK

The CVDLINK project team at its first meeting

A team in the Department of Informatics at Universität Hamburg is taking part in the European Union research program Horizon Europe on the CVDLINK project. The international cooperative project is focusing on the use of AI to improve the treatment of cardiovascular diseases and to reduce the associated costs. The group will use a platform in compliance with data protection to advance their research.

Cardiovascular diseases rank among the world’s most common causes of death, taking an estimated 17.9 million human lives annually. Hospitals and regional health offices record extensive patient data. By analyzing these, researchers can gain valuable insight into the way in which cardiovascular diseases manifest in different regions, how probable or predictable they are, and how high mortality rates are.

The exchange of data, however, is often impeded by murky ethical and legal conditions as well as the different and often isolated nature of the data themselves. CVDLINK aims to integrate these disparate sources into a single platform for the purpose of analysis and shared use of the data. Using this platform, AI-based medical instruments will be developed for the effective prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cardiovascular diseases.

Data protection concerns

These instruments will take into account both the needs of health-care specialists and ethical and statutory principles. Universität Hamburg will play a special role in CVDLINK in the area of data protection. “In our EU project, FeatureCloud.ai, we have already developed a centralized maching-learning tool for the health sector,” explains Prof. Dr. Jan Baumbach from the Department of Informatics at Universität Hamburg. “We will build upon these technologies to facilitate analyses in CVDLINK in compliance with data protection statutes.”

To do so, the subproject in Hamburg will receive €650,000 of the total €9.5 million that the EU is providing over the next 48 months to CVDLINK. The funds will come from the Horizon program budget within the scope of Grant Agreement No. 101137278.

Cooperation among 19 institutions

Hospitals, AI developers, and medical and ethics researchers from 19 institutions throughout Europe and beyond are taking part in CVDLINK. Project partners in addition to Universität Hamburg include: Software Imagination & Vision, VicomTech, Tampere University, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Pirkanmaan Welfare Area, Trilateral Research, the Technical University of Darmstadt, Veracell, Athens Medical Group, CERTH, Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Hillel Yaffe Medical Center, Kineret—the Israel Health Data-Lake at the Ministry of Health, Institute of Cardiology at Moldova's Institute of Public Health, Wellics, Kaunas University of Technology, University of Tartu, and SYNYO GmbH.