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Research area

Artificial Intelligence

VirHub: Modelling Pandemic Outbreaks

Besides the tragic loss of human lives,
the global pandemic of COVID-19 is heavily impacting
public health systems and the global economy,
presenting highly uncertain consequences to societies.
The aim of the project Modelling Pandemic Outbreaks is to develop a tool for the early diagnosis of risk factors in populations,
taking into account both genomics and environmental elements, in order to provide
a reliable DSS (Decision Support System) tool for governments and health organizations
to take better decisions on the right measures to contain the pandemic.
By applying Artificial Intelligence to genomic analyses
of patients affected by COVID-19, the project will scientifically identify
the genomic patterns of individuals more exposed to severe acute respiratory syndromes:
this will help to stratify the population layers more exposed
to the serious clinical symptoms of the virus.
Furthermore, the model will analyse how areas where COVID-19 outbreaks are having
the heaviest impact, are related to environmental factors; for example,
temperature, humidity level, concentrations of CO2 and pollutants.
By facilitating HPC technologies to handle the large dataset, outputs will empower governments
and IGOs to anticipate and identify measures to reduce the impact of the outbreak,
and also implement management strategies able to mitigate factors related to future outbreaks.
The VirHub project has been submitted to the Innovative Medicine
Initiative (IMI2) programme, sponsored by the European Union
and the European Pharmaceutical Industry.
Partners: Ventiseidieci – as lead institution, Dante Labs, Poznań Supercomputing
and Networking Center - PSNC, University of Padua,
National Research Council of Italy - CNR,
University of Pisa and Radboud University Medical Centre