European project PROMINENT will enhance diagnosis and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases

Partners of the PROMINENT project have announced the launch of a collaborative pan-European initiative funded through the Innovative Health Initiative (IHI). The project will create a digital platform for precision medicine to improve the diagnosis and treatment of neurodegenerative disease and co-morbidities. The overriding objective is to assist clinicians with individualised decision support in the evaluation of patients with suspected cognitive impairment.

The PROMINENT consortium is a public-private partnership funded by the IHI for a period of five years that brings together experts in neurodegenerative diseases and clinical neuroscience, artificial intelligence (AI), health economics, and patient advocacy. Project partners also include some of Europe’s leading medical centers for the diagnosis and treatment of cognitive disorders. 

The Barcelonaβeta Brain Research Center (BBRC), research center of the Pasqual Maragall Foundation, and the company SYNAPSE Research Management Partners, specialized in management of research and development projects, are the two partners of the project in Spain. “At BBRC we will work to develop and validate prediction models and diagnostic algorithms for PROMINENT's digital platform, based on a combination of large-scale datasets”, explains Dr. Juan Domingo Gispert, leader of the Neuroimaging research group at BBRC, who leads the center's participation in the project. Meanwhile, SYNAPSE will contribute with the application of innovative project management tools, processes, and methodologies for an optimal strategic direction of the project. In addition, SYNAPSE’s direct connection with the NEURO Cohort initiative and with the European EHDEN project represents an unparalleled opportunity for PROMINENT to access an extraordinary amount of high-quality data.

Improving the management of Alzheimer’s disease

The first application for PROMINENT will be in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), which affects over 20 million people in Europe. The prevalence of Alzheimer’s is expected to double over the next three decades. However, diagnosis and management are challenging due to the high incidence of comorbidities, such as cardiovascular and psychiatric conditions. By taking into account individual differences in patients’ genes, lifestyles and clinical parameters, precision medicine has the potential to dramatically improve diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of the disease. 

“With a large ageing population and an ambition to maintain good health into the higher ages, Europe has a great need for precision medicine systems that can support clinicians with diagnosing and treating neurodegenerative conditions, and provide support to patients and their care partners”, said Principal Investigator, Dr Linus Jönsson. “PROMINENT will leverage digital tools and biomarkers together with advanced analytics to increase the accuracy of AD diagnosis and prognosis, paving the way for the introduction of new health technologies that will improve the lives of patients and care partners.”  

The PROMINENT digital platform 

A core outcome for the project will be its digital platform, which will leverage existing tools for AI-based image analysis developed by project co-Principal Investigator, Dr Jyrki Lötjönen from Combinostics. Building on these tools, PROMINENT will develop an open, interoperable platform capable of interacting with a wide range of systems to integrate multi-modal diagnostic data. 

Powered by innovative prognostic and diagnostic algorithms, the platform will enable personalised prediction of patient-relevant outcomes as well as evidence-based recommendations for clinical management. Patients and care partners will receive understandable, personalised information on their brain health, and clinicians will benefit from these novel decision support tools that will guide them on the optimal diagnostic and therapeutic pathways. 

Enabling real-world implementation

Beyond establishing a digital platform for precision medicine, PROMINENT will pave the way for implementation in healthcare systems across Europe, using established co-creation approaches to meaningfully involve clinicians, patients, and care partners along with representatives of regulatory agencies, health technology assessment bodies (HTA), and payers. 

A prospective evaluation study led by the University of Cologne will assess how well the decision support system provides relevant, actionable information to clinicians, patients, and care partners. Detailed feedback from interviews and surveys will facilitate iterative improvements to the PROMINENT system and user experience. A prospective validation study (led by Region Stockholm) will determine the diagnostic and prognostic accuracy of the platform, and assess clinical confidence in diagnosis before and after accessing the PROMINENT platform.

With new disease-modifying therapies for AD on the horizon, there is a real need to support the introduction and optimal use of these novel drugs, and provide evidence for regulators, HTA bodies, and payers. PROMINENT will rise to this challenge by supporting clinicians to ensure adherence with appropriate use guidelines, and by developing a framework for real-world evidence generation, delivering measurable improvements in clinical diagnosis, patient management, uptake of novel health technologies, and cost-effectiveness.

“Precision medicine is the future of healthcare, and with the PROMINENT project, we are taking a significant step forward in enhancing the diagnosis and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. Our goal is to provide clinicians with individualised decision support and improve patient outcomes through personalised prediction models as well as evidence-based recommendations. With the collaboration of our esteemed partners, we are confident that PROMINENT will transform the way we approach cognitive impairment and ultimately improve the lives of patients across Europe.” - Dr Linus Jönsson, Professor of Health Economics at Karolinska Institutet, PROMINENT Principal Investigator.

The PROMINENT project has a budget of 11,069,750 € from which 6,069,750 € is funded by IHI and 5,000,000 € is committed by contributing partners.

Partners involved in the project:

• Karolinska Institutet
• Combinostics Oy
• Combinostics US Inc.
• Synapse Research Management Partners Sl 
• Alzheimer Europe
• Region Stockholm
• BioArctic AB
• Klinikum der Universität Zu Köln
• IHE, Institutet för Hälso- och Sjukvårdsekonomi 
• Fundació Barcelonaβeta Brain Research Center
• CHU Hopitaux de Bordeaux
• Univerzitetni Klinicni Center Ljubljana
• University of Eastern Finland
• Stichting Vumc