NEW YORK – A project to corral data and develop personalized treatment strategies for cardiovascular disease patients has launched in Utrecht, Netherlands, the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) said on Monday.
The project, dubbed NextGen and spearheaded by the ESC, is funded with a €7.6 million ($8.2 million) grant from Horizon Europe, the EU's research and innovation funding program.
The NextGen project is a collaboration between 21 entities, including clinical research organizations, universities, subject matter experts, and professional associations. This consortium aims to integrate health and genetic information from various data sources to underpin research on cardiovascular diseases.
Consortium members believe that with the help of artificial intelligence they will be able to glean new strategies for tailoring prevention and treatment approaches based on patients' genetic profiles and health data.
"To develop individualized therapies, we need to compile as much information as possible about individuals, and that's where NextGen comes in," Pim van der Harst, project coordinator and a professor at University Medical Center Utrecht, said in a statement. "The unique picture we generate will then form the basis for improving cardiovascular health and well-being."
Panos Deloukas, a consortium member and professor at Queen Mary University of London, in a statement added, "This is a tremendous opportunity and a challenge we have in building the right toolbox that will allow [us] to unite CVD patient data across Europe and implement precision medicine to improve cardiovascular healthcare."