Thess News: Newspaper article about the ONCODIR project

The Regional Development Fund of Central Macedonia participates as a partner in the ONCODIR project (full project title: Evidence-based Participatory Decision Making for Cancer Prevention through implementation research), which is financed by the European Framework Program Horizon Europe 2021-2027.

 
The ONCODIR project focuses on implementing and scaling up evidence-based primary cancer prevention interventions at local, regional and national levels. As part of the project, a platform will be created, in which all prediction and prevention mechanisms will be integrated, allowing users to take advantage of its innovative capabilities. Through this platform, interested parties will be able to be informed about the results of the project and how they can help them prevent colorectal cancer. More particularly, the platform will provide stakeholders – clinical experts, policy makers, citizens/patients – with the appropriate tools that reveal the hidden factors and various barriers that hinder the adoption of evidence-based primary prevention interventions for colorectal cancer by citizens, such as the geographical area where they live, the activities they do, the foods they consume and will allow them to better understand their health status and how they could potentially improve it.

 
Already in the course of the project, information actions and meetings of the partnership structure have been carried out, in which the Regional Development Fund of Central Macedonia had an active participation. The partnership consists of 27 partners led by CERTH (National Center for Research and Technological Development), coming from interdisciplinary fields of research, technology and the field of social & human sciences, with a proven track record of high quality research capacity. From Greece, the Ministry of Health, the Institute of Communications and Information Systems, the Sole Proprietorship of EXUS Software and the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki also participate as project partners. The carefully structured work program incorporates a holistic approach to achieving ONCODIR’s objectives and reaching attainable results with significant exploitation potential.

 
The Regional Development Fund of Central Macedonia participated as a partner in the Kick-off Meeting of the ONCODIR project, on June 12 and 13, 2023, in Thessaloniki. The meeting was organized by the Lead Partner of the project, the National Center for Research and Technological Development (CERTH) and specifically the Institute of Information Technology and Communications and the entire partnership structure was in attendance. During the meeting, after the necessary acquaintances of the partners were done, each organization presented their activities, the planning and objectives of the ONCODIR project were presented, as well as useful information about the progress of the project.

 
On January 23-25, 2024, the 1st Plenary Meeting of the ONCODIR project was held in Nicosia, Cyprus, organized by the project partner Catalink Limited (Cyprus). The meeting was attended by the representatives of the partnership structure of the project, among them the Regional Development Fund of Central Macedonia. During the 1st Plenary Meeting of the project partners, a dynamic exchange of ideas and knowledge took place focusing on the work packages and deliverables of the project. The progress of the project in the first months of its implementation and the progress of the creation of the project’s basic platform were presented. The basic tools that will support the platform and will be developed by the partners were also presented, as well as the set of data collected for this purpose.

 
Finally, the Regional Development Fund of Central Macedonia participated in the 2nd Plenary Meeting of the ONCODIR project, which took place in Vienna, Austria on July 01-03 2024, organized by the project partner SYNYO GmbH. The Plenary Meeting was attended by the representatives of the corporate structure of the project, among them RDFCM. During the 2nd Plenary Meeting of the project partners, there was a review of the project course and the progress achieved. Specifically, the key digital tools that were developed within the project to support the three end-user groups on which ONCODIR focuses, were presented. The tools include three end-user interface systems: a mobile app for citizens, an online platform focused on clinicians, and an online platform for policy makers. The latter are framed by the project’s central platform, by prediction tools based on artificial intelligence, as well as by the set of collected data. The project partners exchanged ideas and knowledge and also discussed the next steps in the implementation of the project deliverables.

 
The results of the ONCODIR project will be validated in three Laboratory Integration Tests (LITs) and three Large-scale Intervention Pilots (LIPs) in five EU Member States, with the active participation of medical scientists, healthcare providers, institutions and experts. The Regional Development Fund of Central Macedonia has already proposed, as requested by the Ministry of Health, primary prevention interventions in the context of the Greek Pilot. Additionally, RDFCM was involved in the process of assigning weights to the criteria that had been selected, examining how important each criterion is in reaching a decision and prioritizing the proposed interventions.

 
The Regional Development Fund of Central Macedonia will contribute to the effort of finding new affordable programs for colorectal cancer prevention strategies and designing the plan for the smooth integration and operation of these strategies taking into account economic, political and other factors. Finally, RDFCM will contribute to the overall administrative and financial coordination of the project and the development of a multifactorial decision-making framework, while helping to verify the results of the project through integration tests and pilot tests. The role of the Regional Development Fund will of course also concern communication, dissemination and involvement of the interested parties.


For more information, you can visit the project website https://www.oncodir.eu 

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This project has received funding from the European Health and Digital Executive Agency under grant agreement No 101096667.

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