About the Project

Motivation

Global Burden of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs)

2021

27th May

World Health Assembly approves development of implementation roadmap for achieving Sustainable Development Goal target on non-communicable diseases.

The motivation behind SHIELD is to decrease premature mortality from NCDs by providing personalized preventive care, stratification, and early interventions aimed at mitigating the risk and progression of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and diabetes. SHIELD utilizes the power of AI to create a beyond state-of-the-art model for risk identification and stratification, a feedback and self-monitoring tool for both individuals and clinicians, and an evidence-based behavioral change intervention delivered via the SHIELD app.

2024

9th January

World Economic Forum has driven a New Global Initiative to Advance Digital and AI-Driven Transformation of Healthcare Systems.

Digital transformation and new tech tools can provide scalable solutions to systemic challenges in global healthcare.

Technological Advances Driving Change

2024

11th September

AstraZeneca’s new AI technology MILTON predicts more than 1,000 diseases before diagnosis.

noviembre

A recent study in the The Lancet Digital Health evidenced the benefits of mobile phone interventions to improve health outcomes among patients with chronic diseases.

octubre

Providing LLM support for patients to interpret their data and conversational AI to answer their medical questions will foster patient empowerment.

A 2024 study delves into the potential for LLMs to transform cardiovascular medicine.

Ambition

The main ambition of SHIELD is to leverage multimodal data collection, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and collaboration among all actors in the healthcare system to develop risk scores and identify personalized prevention strategies to be tested and validated for two NCDs: cardiovascular disease (CVD) and diabetes (2 of the 5 major NCDs).

SHIELD proposes to use risk individualisation metrics to guide personalized prevention strategies and care plans, and reduce the risk and progression of NCDs. For this reason, SHIELD will initially focus on secondary/tertiary prevention, empowering patients with CVD and diabetes to effectively self-manage their early-diagnosed conditions and slow disease progression. This approach is effective because long-term healthier lifestyle changes and continuous health monitoring are more effective for at-risk/diagnosed patients than the general population. Nevertheless, insights derived from the research carried out in SHIELD will serve to define a guideline for effective prevention strategies with high population-wide impact.