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Personalised solutions for the treatment of traumatic brain injuries
24.02.2011
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and a Consortium of leading research institutions across Europe are taking the treatment of traumatic brain injuries in a more individualised direction in the EU funded project TBIcare. A software solution that will be developed as part of the project will make it possible to match individual patient data with the injury’s characteristics, and thus ensure that each brain injury patient receives the best possible treatment.
Every year, more than 20,000 Finns are injured and several thousand lose their
ability to work as a result of traumatic brain injury. The problem is also
considerable in terms of the Finnish economy. Traumatic brain injury results
in more lost working years than cancers, cerebrovascular diseases and HIV/AIDS
together. For example, on a global scale, the number of working years lost due
to traumatic brain injury is four times that of diabetes-related loss.
Due
to a high degree of variation in the injuries of individual patients, the
methods currently in use in the treatment of brain injury patients lack strong
scientific evidence. Coordinated by VTT, the TBIcare project aims to develop
methods to allow each brain injury patient to receive individual treatment
that is optimised for his or her needs.
The aim is to develop
a tool that will make the day-to-day clinical work of doctors easier and also
revolutionise the treatment of traumatic brain injury. The main objective of
the project is to create a new type of software that will enable doctors to
match the different variables describing the injury and the medical condition
of the patient with each other. Using the extensive database and system
simulation, the software will then form a detailed analysis of the nature of
the patient’s brain injury and the necessary treatment.
The
budget for the three-year project is EUR 4.2 million, of which EUR 3.2 million
is contributed by the EU. The Consortium includes VTT Technical Research
Centre of Finland, GE Healthcare Ltd. (UK), Turku University Central Hospital
(Finland), University of Cambridge (UK), Imperial College London (UK),
Complexio S.a.r.L. (France), Kaunas University of Technology (Lithuania), and
GE Healthcare Finland Oy. The project is part of the National Brain Injury
Centre to be established in Turku, one of whose objectives is to be
responsible for the future development of research and treatment practices in
this field in Finland.
Additional information
Olli Tenovuo
Clinical Coordinator
+358 50 4383802
Harri Siitari
Chief Research Scientist
+358 40 0784517