Having been conceived as a Specific Targeted Research or Innovation Project (STREP), HealthAgents intends to produce a final, concrete product in the form of an Agent-based Distributed Decision Support System for Brain Tumour Diagnosis and Prognosis  for the improvement of health conditions of the European population.

IST strategic objective

IST-2004-2.4.11: 2.4.11 Integrated biomedical information for better health
Objective: Research and development on innovative ICT systems and services that process, integrate and use all relevant biomedical information for improving health knowledge and processes related to prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and personalisation of health care.
Focus: Methods and systems for improved medical knowledge discovery and understanding through integration of biomedical information (e.g. using modelling, visualisation, data mining and grid technologies). Biomedical data and information to be considered include not only clinical information relating to tissues, organs or personal health-related information but also information at the level of molecules and cells, such as that acquired from genomics and proteomics research.

Other European thematic areas addressed 

LSH-2004-1.2.2-1: New Screening techniques and strategies in the early diagnosis of solid tumours

Objective: New diagnostic tests and development of new tools and non-invasive methods for early diagnosis, monitoring of disease progression and interpretation of in-vivo data so as to increase the possibilities and effectiveness of the existing therapies.

Focus: By making full use of modern genomics, proteomics, nanotechnologies and biotechnological approaches, the activities should exclusively concentrate on the molecular characterization and metabolic monitoring of tumours, leading to the development of new and advanced tools necessary for tumour prevention and diagnosis. Proposals should address ethical and regulatory issues as well as opportunities for industrial exploitation. Therefore the consortium should include partners with relevant expertise, patient associations and industry, particularly SMEs.

IST-2002-2.3.1.11: eHealth

Objective: To develop an intelligent environment that enables ubiquitous management of citizens’ health status and to assist health professionals in coping with some major challenges, risk management and the integration into clinical practice of advances in health knowledge.
Focus: Research on new reliable software tools supporting health professionals in taking promptly the best possible decision for prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. Specific focus will be given to research into user-friendly, fast, and reliable tools providing access to heterogeneous health information sources, and also to new methods for decision support and risk analysis. The use of GRID technology and open source is encouraged where appropriate. Networking of researchers in the areas of medical informatics, bioinformatics, and neuroinformatics with the objectives of advancing health knowledge leading to a new generation of eHealth systems assisting in the individualisation of disease prevention, diagnoses, and treatment.