Highlights from 2023: a year in review
In this article, you will find the highlights of AINCP European project activities in 2023. It was an exciting and challenging year, during which all Partners’ teams got to know each other and set the stage for, in order:
Foundation of the project (boards, strategy, planning, legal procedures)
Development of the observational study phase (ongoing)
Development of the Rehabilitation study phase (starting)
The whole team, led by UNIPI, went through a steadfast schedule since June 2022, with dedicated small working groups and milestones. Project meetings were held on a regular basis and each month all Partners gathered to share project advancement, discuss (and solve) issues and reporting.
Being all from different countries we’ve worked mainly online and managed to meet in person all together at least twice a year, to speed up on the decisive tasks. For the scope of this blog article, it is sufficient to say that the many Work Packages and Tasks broadly convey into three main areas we’ve been working in:
Clinical: led by the PI Prof. Giuseppina Sgandurra UNIPI, with FSM Italy, UCLM Spain, KU Leuven Belgium, UQ-CSIRO Australia and DTMU from Georgia
Technological: led by the co-PI Prof. Giuseppe Prencipe UNIPI, with Khymeia Italy, Tyromotion Austria, Noldus Netherland, Scuola Universitaria Sant’Anna Italy.
Co-design and Ethical: with FTS Italy, UniSalento Italy, Scuola Universitaria Sant’Anna Italy.
DTMU Partner from Georgia joined us one year later in June 2023, thanks to the positive outcome of a hop-in EU call for the inclusion of a “low to middle income country”.
UQ-CSIRO Australia, though not from Europe, is an associate Partner of UNIPI on the project, working on data processing of clinical data and guidance on rehabilitation assessments .
As a first of its kind project, AINCP Partners had to approve a common language for both internal and external communication to disseminate the project aims and activity, known as
Communication, Exploitation, Dissemination and Outreach activities, led by FTS Italy,
and an integral part of the AINCP Partners’ work.
The AINCP logo, the communication materials, the project website (you are currently reading!), were the earliest tools we built in order to implement open access to our public project deliverables and allow anyone to be up to date about the project’s ongoing activities, progress and results.
AINCP social networks and TV have been very important to grow the project’s visibility. The first video interview on Rai TV, Italian national broadcast channel, on 24th April “TG2 Medicina 33” was very successful to speak about cerebral palsy and the project observational study phase to a large audience. It marked one of the highest number of visits to our website and was awarded the 2023 Journalism Prize Bomprezzi.
Other TV reports have been recorded during our participations at Festival della Scienza, where an interested audience mainly composed by students joined us to discuss the challenges of the use of AI in healthcare and how we are dealing with them.
As a result, we’ve received quite a few requests through the AINCP website contact form and Newsletter, from parents and therapists in Italy and neighbouring countries.
More than thirty articles were published in newspapers and magazines, of which you can find a selection in the Press review pages of our website in English and in Italian. Most AINCP articles published in the press were connected with the Observational study recruitment in Italy and Spain, the first two countries to start the recruitment of children with UCP in 2023. You can access all information and materials here.
Attendance to Dissemination initiatives worldwide has been regularly announced on our Events page here. Events like academic conferences and workshops require a rigourous process of application, with proposal submissions, participants listings and, in most cases, these processes have to be monitored and carried out well in advance, at least 5-6 months. Some of them were EACD 2023 , EULAC PerMed and World Ability Sport Conference.
The building of a new healthcare model, based on a decision support tool for diagnosis (dDST) and a home-based decision support tool for rehabilitation (rDST) was at the core of our dissemination initiatives. Our aim was in the first year to reach all stakeholders, from the scientific community to patients, industry, healthcare sector and civil society, and we applied to various dissemination events that could be advantageous in this perspective.
We received valuable feedbacks and appreciation for our approach, especially for the combination of three aspects:
the use of advanced AI in healthcare,
the “personalization” aspect of the medical solution,
the multidisciplinary aspect,
because we consider end-users as necessary co-designers of the solution. The importance of direct involvement of beneficiaries was particularly evident at 2023 SINPIA SIMFER Conference, where AINCP was unique in the landscape of the two days conference participants: it was an excellent opportunity for us to showcase the AINCP “care pathway” through the strict collaboration of expertise that usually display themselves separately from one another.
The involvement of families of children with cerebral palsy – for the first time ever – as co-designers of the solution was highlighted by FTS, AINCP Partner and the operative arm of FightTheStroke Foundation, which manages the largest community of families of children with cerebral palsy in Italy with 10 years and more history of providing them with support, informative data, and trustful resources.
As for scientific posters, we are proud to highlight the first prize won at Brain Innovation Days in Brussels for the AINCP poster presented by KU Leuven.
AINCP was at the forefront regarding ethical considerations in the use of artificial intelligence in medicine, and moreover dealing with children and disability. Ethical aspects have been discussed during events and workshops on the use of advanced AI technology like Festival della Robotica and the AI Summer School; and during dedicated conferences attended by Partner UniSalento like the “14th International Scientific Conference on Neuroethics” held in Lucca, Italy, and the “Convegno Nazionale della Società Italiana di Filosofia Morale” in Rome.
To let people meet our team, we published on Youtube a Partners’ series to introduce AINCP people, their institutions and role in the project, you can watch it here.
In 2023 we also had a new hired! Giovanni Arras was one of the youngest professionals who attended the AI & Society Summer school. He was later hired by UNIPI as a researcher on the AINCP project. Not only is he an enthusiast philosophy teacher with a passion for new technologies, but he also experiences cerebral palsy firsthand since childhood.
We promise we will tell you in another blog post the interesting story of Giovanni and how serendipitously he reached out to us.
Thanks for reading and if you know anyone interested in our work, please do share this article!!