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AI treatments for stroke survivors

24 January 2025
The UMBRELLA project in Barcelona
Stroke prevention The UMBRELLA project kicked off in Barcelona last October. Credit: UMBRELLA

Data on strokes is plentiful but fragmented, making it difficult to exploit in data-driven treatment strategies. The toolbox of the high-energy physicist is well adapted to the task. To amplify CERN’s societal contributions through technological innovation, the Unleashing a Comprehensive, Holistic and Patient-Centric Stroke Management for a Better, Rapid, Advanced and Personalised Stroke Diagnosis, Treatment and Outcome Prediction (UMBRELLA) project – co-led by Vall d’Hebron Research Institute and Siemens Healthineers – was officially launched on 1 October 2024. The kickoff meeting in Barcelona, Spain, convened more than 20 partners, including Philips, AstraZeneca, KU Leuven and EATRIS. Backed by nearly €27 million from the EU’s Innovative Health Initiative and industry collaborators, the project aims to transform stroke care across Europe.

The meeting highlighted the urgent need to address stroke as a pressing health challenge in Europe. Each year, more than one million acute stroke cases occur in Europe, with nearly 10 million survivors facing long-term consequences. In 2017, the economic burden of stroke treatments was estimated to be €60 billion – a figure that continues to grow. UMBRELLA’s partners outlined their collective ambition to translate a vast and fragmented stroke data set into actionable care innovations through standardisation and integration.

UMBRELLA will utilise advanced digital technologies to develop AI-powered predictive models for stroke management. By standardising real-world stroke data and leveraging tools like imaging technologies, wearable devices and virtual rehabilitation platforms, UMBRELLA aims to refine every stage of care – from diagnosis to recovery. Based on post-stroke data, AI-driven insights will empower clinicians to uncover root causes of strokes, improve treatment precision and predict patient outcomes, reshaping how stroke care is delivered.

Central to this effort is the integration of CERN’s federated-learning platform, CAFEIN. A decentralised approach to training machine-learning algorithms without exchanging data, it was initiated thanks to seed funding from CERN’s knowledge transfer budget for the benefit of medical applications: now CAFEIN promises to enhance diagnosis, treatment and prevention strategies for stroke victims, ultimately saving countless lives. A main topic of the kickoff meeting was the development of the “U-platform” – a federated data ecosystem co-designed by Siemens Healthineers and CERN. Based on CAFEIN, the infrastructure will enable the secure and privacy preserving training of advanced AI algorithms for personalised stroke diagnostics, risk prediction and treatment decisions without sharing sensitive patient data between institutions. Building on CERN’s expertise, including its success in federated AI modelling for brain pathologies under the EU TRUST­roke project, the CAFEIN team is poised to handle the increasing complexity and scale of data sets required by UMBRELLA.

Beyond technological advancements, the UMBRELLA consortium discussed a plan to establish standardised protocols for acute stroke management, with an emphasis on integrating these protocols into European healthcare guidelines. By improving data collection and facilitating outcome predictions, these standards will particularly benefit patients in remote and underserved regions. The project also aims to advance research into the causes of strokes, a quarter of which remain undetermined – a statistic UMBRELLA seeks to change.

This ambitious initiative not only showcases CERN’s role in pioneering federated-learning technologies but also underscores the broader societal benefits brought by basic science. By pushing technologies beyond the state-of-the-art, CERN and other particle-physics laboratories have fuelled innovations that have an impact on our everyday lives. As UMBRELLA begins its journey, its success holds the potential to redefine stroke care, delivering life-saving advancements to millions and paving the way for a healthier, more equitable future.

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