The AVERT-IT project presents the opportunity to exploit the data developed in the FP5 EC-funded project Brain IT. That project involved all six of the current clinical partners and Philips who were responsible for equipping those centres with State-of-the-Art monitoring equipment which enabled the continual monitoring and collection of data from patients with TBI in ICUs at each centre. The entire set of data accumulated in the Brain IT proposal is available to the AVERT-IT project. Therefore, right from the start, the AVERT-IT project is capitalising on an existing pan-European network of clinical centres and the data produced from them. In addition, the project will benefit from the following Added Value of a pan-European approach: ➢ A cost-effective method for development of the predictive software for clinical management support ➢ A critical mass of clinical centres capable of monitoring and analysing data to the high standards set by the Brain IT project. ➢ Access to two new real time intensive care monitoring systems that no other consortium has access to. ➢ Access to two unique high resolution ICU monitoring datasets for model building and validation: o Brain IT – 384 patients with GOSe clinical outcome ➢ Global experts in physiological AE detection and quantification who have developed new summary measures which better describe the burden of AE. ➢ European experts in large industry asset performance management involving high resolution multi-parameter time-series data capture with application of innovative data mining technologies. ➢ Leading European experts in IT-based multi-centre data collection with proven IT data collection tools set up with two EC-funded FP5 projects and constituting the ideal network for clinical validation of optimised AE predictive technologies. ➢ Global experts for deployment of Grid middleware for secure access to distributed medical datasets.
Other relevant national or international research activities – Through two completed EEC FP5 projects (QLGI-CT-2000-00454, qlct-2002-01160), the BrainIT group have defined and tested the feasibility for collection of a core-dataset [1] of high resolution medical and monitoring data using IT based methods from 22 intensive care centres across Europe. The creation of this infrastructure has fostered interest from the medical device community as a more efficient network for trialing new health care technology. Towards that end the BrainIT group have just successfully completed a 6 centre multi-centre clinical trial of a new form of intracranial pressure sensor (Raumedic Neurovent-P). Over a two year period, 384 patients BrainIT datasets have been recruited resulting in the creation of a uniquely detailed database shared by the group for analysis and hypothesis generation. This unique dataset has stimulated to date 12 international database analyses projects and six papers in collaborations between scientists and clinicians across Europe (http://www.brainit.org/bf01/brainit/brainit/brainit_projects.asp).
The creation of this unique infrastructure has created strong collaborative links with other European wide networks including the European Brain Injury consortium (EBIC – www.ebic.nl )A large (130+) consortium of neurosurgical centres collaborating on epidemiological and phase 1, 2 and 3 clinical drug trials in brain injured patients. We have a direct line of communication and collaboration with EBIC through our BrainIT steering group member Juan Sahuquillo who is also on the EBIC executive committee. Similarly, Ian Piper has forged strong collaborative links with the Cooperative Study on Brain Injury Depolarisations (COSBID – www.cosbid.org ) which is focused upon research into abnormal brain electrical and neuron-chemical activity following brain injury. Ian Piper and the BrainIT technical group have been advising on the structure of the COSBID database thus encouraging future data sharing activity between the two organisations. The BrainIT groups collaborations with Richard Sinnott and the National eScience Centre in Glasgow, through the linkage of the University of Glasgow and the University of Edinburgh (who co-host the National e-Science Centre) have created direct channels of communication with numerous European Grid projects involving NeSC including EGEE (http://public.eu-egee.org/) , CoreGrid (http://www.coregrid.net/) and the NextGrid (http://www.nextgrid.org/) projects. As such, we will ensure that the project results are independently evaluated and disseminated throughout Europe.
Assumptions and external factors that might affect the impacts – There are three major factors that might affect the impacts listed above. Firstly, we assume that the AVERT-IT project will be successful. Secondly, we assume that nobody else will come up with a better system for prediction than our BANN and thirdly we assume that ICUs will continue to operate in the same or similar fashion for the foreseeable future. The risks associated with these assumptions have been addressed under risk management in Section 1.3.3 and as a consequence of that analysis, the consortium is as confident as it can be that it will achieve all the listed objectives if it takes all the right steps as listed above.
