INDIVIDUALISED CARE FROM EARLY RISK OF CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE TO ESTABLISHED HEART FAILURE

The burden of cardiovascular disease (CVD) on society is huge with >85 million people affected in Europe. The overall prevalence continues to grow due to unhealthy lifestyles and population aging. Heart failure (HF) is the final common pathway of all CVD and has a 5 year mortality rate of 20-50% despite significant advances in therapy.iCARE4CVD aims to address this burden by contributing to three essential steps to improve the current care pathways, covering all stages from early risk to established HF: 1) early diagnosis to identify patients at risk of CVD and divide them into clinically meaningful subgroups; 2) risk stratification for these subgroups to define the urgency for intervention; and 3) prediction of treatment response for each subgroup. This will be achieved by the following steps: clinical partners will provide a large set of cohorts including >1,000,000 patients with a wide range of biomarkers (e.g. digital, blood, imaging). Anonymous access to data will be enabled by using a blockchain-supported federated database. Artificial intelligence-based modeling also considering patient relevant factors will assess changes in risk and stratify patients according to their individual responses to therapy. Results will then be prospectively validated in new and ongoing large cohorts and a pilot trial to test the prediction of treatment response by using multiple biomarkers going beyond current risk prediction (such as SCORE) towards individualized therapy. Results will be used to provide novel decision tools for each step targeting newly identified subgroups and as a blueprint for innovative future trials to individualise prevention and therapy. Patient involvement is key in every part of iCARE4CVD (e.g. patient advisory board, country-specific Patient Panels) to build a motivational framework for self-care by patients. The project brings together an EU-wide consortium with the needed resources and expertise from the public and private side to bring iCARE4CVD to success.