On 18 November, the H2020-funded VirtualBrainCloud project (TVB_Cloud) held its General Assembly (GA) meeting online. The focus of this GA meeting was to discuss progress with the TVB_Cloud Ethical and Technical Advisory Board members, which include Prof. Dipak Kalra (President of the European Institute of Innovation through Health Data), Prof. Thomas Schulthess (Director of the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre) and Dr. Magali Haas, CEO of Cohen Veterans Bioscience. Chaired by Prof. Petra Ritter, who is leading the project, the meeting was attended by over 45 project participants, including representatives from the 17 institutions and organisations that make up the TVB_Cloud consortium. Jean Georges (Executive Director) and Angela Bradshaw (Project Officer) represented Alzheimer Europe at the meeting.
The primary objective of TVB_Cloud is to create a decision support system for clinicians, formed around a cloud platform for personalised brain simulations based on high-quality, multidisciplinary clinical data, encompassing EEG and MRI scans, -omics and blood-based biomarker data. This decision support system will enhance the early diagnosis, prognosis and personalised treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, with an initial focus on Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and dementia.
Prof. Ritter kicked off the GA meeting by providing an overview of the main achievements of TVB_Cloud since the project started in 2018. These include the development of a GDPR-compliant and secure virtual research environment, methods for mechanism-based assessment of disease, and tools for visualising 3D simulations of brain networks. Leaders from each Workpackage then spoke about key developments and plans for the next year of the project, with the Advisory Board members providing their perspectives and feedback. Alzheimer Europe will be contributing to ethical and legal reflections on data sharing and AI-based tools for personalised medicine, and will also support Eodyne in developing their rehabilitation gaming system for cognitive training in dementia.