A glance at the future: Dr Jasmin Schulz

An Interview with Dr Jasmin Schulz, Strategic Programme Lead

• A glance at the future

Paving the way for data-driven precision medicine in Europe: Clinnova kicks of

Clinnova, an international project involving clinicians and researchers from Luxembourg, France, Germany and Switzerland, was officially launched in Luxembourg on April 27th during a ceremony attended by the Ministers of Health and of Higher Education and Research. The aim of the initiative is to harness the benefits of precision medicine for therapeutic decisions through data federation, standardisation and interoperability. The project, jointly supported by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR), the Grand Est region, the canton of Basel and the state of Baden-Württemberg, will establish a shared launch pad for the development of medical artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms at the heart of Europe.

Dr Schulz, what are the key issues that the project seeks to address?

Artificial intelligence (AI) holds enormous potential in healthcare, but there are challenges to its realisation, particularly in the context of data enabling and the ability to build appropriate clinical studies. To date, there are no straightforward methods available to decide which drug to prescribe to which patient. With the regular arrival of new drugs on the market, doctors and patients are faced with a real problem: the wrong therapy can prolong the burden of illness while incurring unnecessary costs for the social system. This is where Clinnova comes in.

How will it work in practice?

Clinnova will tackle these challenges on three levels. On the first level, it focuses on generating benefits for patients and physicians on three diseases, namely inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatoid diseases and multiple sclerosis. With an emphasis on data quality and standardisation, the goal is to develop effective AI algorithms that can support physicians in prescribing the right drug to an individual patient at the right time. Furthermore, these data can accelerate translational research into disease causes, which can further improve patient care. On the second level, Clinnova will bridge the worlds of biomedical research and healthcare by fostering
critical infrastructure development in Luxembourg, ensuring data interoperability and integration. Finally, on the third level, Clinnova will federate precision health data across borders. The Clinnova team in Luxembourg has teamed up with Universities and clinical centres in Baden-Württemberg in Germany, the Grand Est region in France, and the region of Basel in Switzerland to invest in similar Clinnova precision health programmes, thereby linking the established IT infrastructures. The Clinnova partners are essentially building a federated precision health network across Europe.

Can you tell us more about the partners involved and the funding?

The Luxembourg arm of the Clinnova project is led by the Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH), in partnership with the University of Luxembourg, the Centre Hospitalier du Luxembourg (CHL) and the Robert Schuman Hospitals (HRS). It is part of the FNR’s National Centres of Excellence in Research (NCER), a programme providing a framework and funding instrument to bundle research excellence around a mission of significant societal relevance by encouraging high-level transdisciplinary research and inter-sectoral collaboration. The funding of an NCER project by the FNR is contingent on a rigorous evaluation by a panel of international experts,
and we are therefore extremely grateful and proud to have been allocated this financing. However, despite this generous
financial support from the Luxembourg government, which runs for a maximum of 8 years, we need to diversify our sources of
funding, which is why private donations constitute a crucial resource. For this reason, every amount donated, big or small, makes a significant difference.