TALK© is a communication tool which aims to guide multi-professional clinical teams learning and improving quality of patient care and patient safety together. It is a simple and practical approach to multi-professional structured feedback and debriefing, to be used after unplanned learning events in clinical environments. Debriefing is the process of an individual or team formally reflecting on their performance after a particular task, a shift or a critical event (World Health Organisation 2009). TALK proposes an easy way to guide a constructive conversation between team members whenever new insights might be learnt from clinical experience. This includes cases or sessions in which things went well but also near misses and untoward events. Patient safety is far too often threatened by unidentified system flaws, poor practices, weaknesses in team communication and lack of appropriate action after critical events. The relevance of a culture of safety and communication is emphasized by WHO advocating debriefing in its Human Factors review, 2009. This RISE project will consist of three phases; firstly secondees will contribute to parallel implementation processes in specified units across the 3 participating countries and will undertake research to better understand the benefits of structured debriefing, communication and organisational culture. Secondly, using the data generated from the research study, further training materials will be developed and translated to support the wider deployment of the TALK tool. Thirdly, the TALK tool will be widely disseminated as a structured debriefing tool and implemented across and beyond all participating partners and its impact will be assessed.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and related disorders leading to dementia are associated with staggering costs and suffering. Recently, there has been some progress in the search for effective therapeutic interventions and it is clear that any treatment is likely to be most effective if administered at the earliest stage of disease, but the health care system is not ready for this new scenario. There is an urgent need, therefore, to establish scalable, cost-efficient diagnostic markers, tools and procedures that can identify people at increased risk, at point of care for stratification into personalized interventions to prevent or delay dementia. PREDICTOM will develop an open-source, interoperable and customisable biomarker screening platform, utilizing an existing online resource to save time and money, to generate an evidence base for general population screening for AD and related disorders. We will bring diagnostics closer to the patient by examining the feasibility of using samples which can be obtained at home (e.g. finger-prick blood, saliva (for genetics and epigenetics) and stool for microbiom) for diagnostic biomarker analysis. We will also evaluate innovative technologies for disease risk identification, including digital technologies and novel MRI, EEG, eye tracking, and blood-based biomarkers. The platform will use artificial intelligence models to analyse data from all biomarkers to identify users at high risk of developing dementia and to direct them to personalized intervention to prevent further cognitive decline and development of dementia. We will seek to facilitate a change in current healthcare practice for early diagnosis of AD through development of new clinical practice guidelines based on evidence generated in the project. By improving the ease of identification of those with early signs of dementia we expect to have a significant impact on personal and financial burden of dementia in Europe and across the world.

Parkinson Disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer’s disease. There is an unmet clinical need to treat Parkinson disease with mild cognitive impairment (PD-MCI). There is ample evidence from epidemiological studies as well as (pre)clinical research that Nicotinic receptors are involved in PD and cognition. Recently a clinical trial suggested that selective α7 nicotinic receptor agonist improved cognition in PD patients, as a secondary outcome measure. Hence, the main goal of PD-MIND is to show the potential of the Astrazeneca nicotinic α7 agonist AZD0328 in a randomized, placebo-controlled, international multicentre, cross-over study on cognition in people diagnosed with PD-MCI. We will assess the Attention Intensity Index composite score from the CogTrackTM system as primary outcome measure and other clinical aspects (cognition, motor symptoms) as secondary outcomes. In addition, blood, CSF and imaging biomarkers will be assessed as potential predictors of response, and as marker of target involvement. Patients (Public and Patient Involvement) and other stakeholders will be engaged from the start to allow integration of end-user perspectives in the design and execution of the project. PD-MIND will put considerably effort to disseminate and exploit clinical outcome data and biomarker results, and to sustain the partnership for subsequent phase 3 clinical studies. PD-MIND consortium consist of world-leading PD-MCI experts in the area of clinical trials, clinical coordination, project management, data management and analysis, and biomarkers. As such the consortium is well positioned to execute the proposed work and complement the EFPIA members.