News

The EurValve final review took place in Eindhoven at the end of March 2019. All deliverables were accepted in May 2019.

The EurValve video has been produced. Watch it on the dissemination page.

Personalised medicine for heart diseases - Computational Models for the Clinic: Cardiac/Cardiovascular Application took place in Krakow on 25 January 2019. A chance for dissemination and discussion with interested clinicians. Find out more about the workshop.

The EurValve final project board meeting took place in Krakow on 24 January 2019. Thanks to everyone at CYFRONET AGH for their hospitality.

The EurValve project officer, Carmen Laplaza-Santos has moved to DG RTD, as deputy Head of Unit of "Personalised and Innovative Medicine".

From 1 October the new Eurvalve project officer is Milan Popovic. Milan is a programme officer at the European Commission.

The EurValve project board met at the Philips site in Hamburg in September 2018.

The consortium was involved in business meetings on the first day and a remote review was held with the outgoing project officer.

The Heart by Numbers: Integrating Theory, Computation and Experiment to Advance Cardiology 2018 was organised by Biophysical Society, Max Delbruck Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC), German Center for Cardiovascular Research e. V. / Deutsches Zentrum fur Herz-Kreislauf-Forschung e. V. (DZHK), Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) from 4 - 7 September 2018.

It took place at the Max Delbruck Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association, Berlin, Germany. It was partly sponsored by EurValve.

The VPH2018 conference took place in Zaragoza, Spain in September 2018.

A number of EurValve members attending and presented at the conference. This included the University of Sheffield, UK; CYFRONET, Poland and TU/e, The Netherlands.

Find out more about the conference.

The World Congress in Biomechanics, WCB2018 conference took place in Dublin in September 2018. Eurvalve members from the University of Sheffield and TU/e attended and presented at the conference.

Professor Pat Lawford (USFD) and Karen El-Arifi (USFD) attended a webinar entitled: The General Data Protection Regulation and Health and Care Research on 11 May 2018.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU) 2016/679 is a regulation in EU law on data protection and privacy for all individuals within the European Union. In addition, it addresses the export of personal data outside the EU.

The GDPR aims primarily to give control to citizens and residents over their personal data and to simplify the regulatory environment for international business by unifying the regulation within the EU.

The regulation becomes enforceable on 25 May 2018.

Guide to GDPR

Under the GDPR, the data protection principles set out the main responsibilities for organisations.

Article 5 of the GDPR requires that personal data shall be

• processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to individuals

• collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes and not further processed in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes; further processing for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes shall not be considered to be incompatible with the initial purposes

• adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary in relation to the purposes for which they are processed

• accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date; every reasonable step must be taken to ensure that personal data that are inaccurate, having regard to the purposes for which they are processed, are erased or rectified without delay

• kept in a form which permits identification of data subjects for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which the personal data are processed; personal data may be stored for longer periods insofar as the personal data will be processed solely for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes subject to implementation of the appropriate technical and organisational measures required by the GDPR in order to safeguard the rights and freedoms of individuals

• processed in a manner that ensures appropriate security of the personal data, including protection against unauthorised or unlawful processing and against accidental loss, destruction or damage, using appropriate technical or organisational measures.

Article 5(2) requires that:

• “the controller shall be responsible for, and be able to demonstrate, compliance with the principles.”

More information on the Guide to the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR).

The EurValve project board had its 21st meeting in Rennes, France at the end of February 2018.

This included a Clinical and Ethical Advisory Board Meeting, chaired by Pat Lawford and an Exploitation and Intellectual Property Rights Board meeting chaired by Keith McCormack.

The meeting was attended by Dr Giacomo Pongiglione, in his role as an independent Ethics expert.

Congratulations to Professor Rod Hose who has recently taken up a position as Adjunct Professor of Computational Cardiovascular Physiology in the Department of Circulation and Medical Imaging at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim in Norway.

NTNU has the main responsibility for higher education in technology in Norway, and it is the country’s premier institution for the education of engineers. The university offers several programmes of professional study and a broad academic curriculum in the natural sciences, social sciences, teacher education, humanities, medicine and health sciences, economics, finance and administration, as well as architecture and the arts.

NTNU Health is one of its four strategic research areas for 2014-2023. Brain researchers May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser at NTNU’s Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience received the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, together with John O’Keefe of University College London.

This position provides a strong complement to Rod’s current role in the Mathematics and Modelling in Medicine Group in the Department of Infection, Immunity and Cardiovascular Disease. A primary motivation for the establishment of this new role was a mutual interest in Sheffield and in Trondheim in the development of processes to personalise mathematical models to describe the physiological excursions, or the physiological envelope, of an individual as they live their lives.

Over the last two decades there has been great emphasis on the anatomical personalisation of three-dimensional haemodynamics models based on increasingly sophisticated medical imaging technology, but relatively little progress on the determination of appropriate boundary conditions to represent the load and threat conditions for the individual.

NTNU has major strengths in the imaging of flow and in exercise physiology, complemented by access to unique collections of health data and genomic data for very large cohorts in the local population, as well as very strong links with St Olavs hospital that parallel our own links with the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals Trust.

It is anticipated that this arrangement will promote new opportunities for collaboration between the two centres. We especially hope to foster new relationships between the clinical teams in Cardiology to advance the translation of modelling into clinical application, and to exploit synergies between the strong engineering groups at NTNU and Sheffield’s Insigneo Institute for in silico Medicine.

CGW Workshop 17 took place in Krakow, Poland on 23 - 25 October 2017. Find out more about the workshop.

The EurValve first period review took place at the end of September in Brussels.

The management to the project was awarded a “very good”. The project officer requested an updated detailed plan of the future work to be submitted.

The second EurValve General Assembly took place at the German Hearth Institute in Berlin at the end of June 2017.

A representative from each member of the consortium was present.

Two boards were approved at the Assembly; the Clinical and Ethics Board and the Exploitation and Intellectual Property Rights Board.

A publications forum was also set up to promote and encourage publications from the project.

A EurValve project board meeting took place at the German Heart Institute in Berlin on 29 - 30 June 2017.

The meeting included: a WP2 Infrastructure and Model Execution Environment tutorial; a Data Architecture Workshop; Feedback from each Workpackage.

There was also the first meeting of the two Boards – the Clinical and Ethical Board chaired by Professor Pat Lawford and the Exploitation and IPR Advisory Board chaired by Dr Keith McCormack.

Two discussion sessions took place, one between the clinicians and one between the modelling group.