The Department of Biomedical Research of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology – Foundation of Research and Technology Hellas (FORTH-IMBB-BR) participates in the KardiaTool project funded by the European Commission within the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program with € 4.9 M for the next 3.5 years. Fourteen partners from ten different countries, including universities, research centers and enterprises, participate in the project, providing the necessary experience to ensure the success of the project in all its stages of development.

More than 26 million patients worldwide suffer from heart failure every year, according to the European Heart Failure Association. A disorder often associated with a bad diagnosis, with the consequent increase in mortality and morbidity, and frequent re-hospitalizations, which result into a great economic burden for the healthcare system. In fact, in Europe, costs related to heart failure account for approximately 2 % of the total healthcare expenses, and are usually associated with the patient's hospitalization. With an average patient hospitalization time of 11 days, the heart failure hospitalization cost is estimated approximately in € 23,000 per patient in the age group of 18-64 years old.

As life expectancy increases worldwide, we are facing new challenges of improving quality of life and healthcare at affordable costs, both for patients, and for the system in general. In the case of heart failure, the diagnosis is complicated, there is a wide spectrum of potential clinical manifestations of the disease and signs symptoms are often non-specific.

The aim of the project is to develop the KardiaTool platform which will be consisted of two parts: KardiaPOC and KardiaSoft. KardiaPOC will be a point of care device detecting in a fast and precise way, the biomarkers of heart failure from saliva samples. KardiaSoft is a decision support software, based on predictive modeling techniques, which will analyze the data measured by the KardiaPOC and other patient’s data directly added by the healthcare professionals, to deliver information on the diagnosis and the therapy monitoring.

KardiaTool will introduce a new method of quick, easy and efficient diagnosis at the point-of-care, as well as a personalized and improved therapy monitoring and health care for patients suffering from heart failure, which is expected to considerably improve the healthcare delivery and quality of life of patients and reduce the healthcare costs.

The KardioTool platform was enthusiastically embraced during its presentation to scientists and entrepreneurs at the 5th Patras Innovation Quest (Patras IQ) (https://www.patrasiq.gr/) that was held on 27th, 28th and 29th of April 2018, at the Athletic Center "D. Tofalos" in Patras. (http://www.kardiatool.eu/dissemination/Events/patras-innovation-quest).

The members of the consortium of the KardiaTool project are:

• École Normale Supérieure de Lyon (ENS) – France(συντονιστήςέργου)
• University of Pisa (UNIPI) - Italy
• University of Ioannina (UOI) - Greece
• University of Surrey - UK
• University College Dublin - Ireland
• Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas (FORTH) - Greece
• CNM-IMB and ICMAB from the Spanish Research Council (CSIC) - Spain
• Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) - Italy
• Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS - Germany
• Micronit Microtechnologies B.V. - Netherlands
• BioTray - France
• Imec - Belgium
• ValoTec – France
• EnaChip Inc. – USA

For more information please contact:

Project website: http://www.kardiatool.eu/

Project coordinator: Prof. Abdelhamid Errachid, Institut de Sciences Analytiques (ISA), Université de Lyon, France

abdelhamid.errachid-el-salhi@univ-lyon1.fr

Local contact persons: Prof. Theodore Fotsis, Prof. Dimitrios I. Fotiadis

Department of Biomedical Research,

Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology,

FORTH, GR 45110, Ioannina, Greece

email: theodoros_fotsis@imbb.forth.gr, fotiadis@cc.uoi.gr