First year of TeleGraft - September 2023

TeleGraft celebrates its first-year anniversary!

On September 14, the TeleGraft consortium met for their second bi-annual meeting as a hybrid event held in Odense.  The meeting was organized by the coordinator, University of Southern Denmark and hosted by Odense University Hospital. It was held for a full day and devoted to partners to report and keep each other updated on their latest developments while reporting on their challenges and to ensure good cooperation and timely planning for the next years to come. 

TeleGraft ambition is to seek to develop a revolutionary artificial blood vessel that is prevented from closing or becoming infected. The upcoming blood vessel is therefore aptly named TeleGraft; ‘Tele’ stands for telemonitoring, and ‘graft’ refers to the implantation of the artificial blood vessel. It will comprise two diagnostic tools to monitor and prevent device complication. TeleGraft has started on September 2022 with a planned duration of 52 months. 

Over its first year, the project has focused on the different tests that pave the way for the clinical trials that will support the development of TeleGraft. 

As regards the ageing of the arteriovenous grafts (AVG), the progress made so far looks promising, though full of challenges and the upcoming year will be key for the rest of the project. Biomodics, the partner responsible for arteriovenous graft function, has been focusing on the aging of the AVG function to prepare for testing the full prototype. These tests will be performed by partner OUH, responsible for these tests to be started at the outset of the second year of the project and all partners all look forward to their results as these will be key for the continuation of the project. In parallel, the associated partner University of Birmingham and partner Verigraft are testing tissue integration and developing biological coating. These will continue to be further tested over the second year of the project. Verigraft is the partner responsible for developing a biological coating for the adventitial aspect of the graft while University of Birmingham is taking care of in vitro evaluation by incorporating all components of the graft into a prototype. To discuss the 

As the first year has ended, our partner BMD, can now start working on the data presentation software as they are responsible for developing a software to present results from AI modelling to end-user and will expand the monitoring dashboard  while IPHT, the partner responsible for integration of optical sensor and waveguiding with arteriovenous graft and for transforming raw data into understandable results through AI modelling will pursue their tasks. In collaboration with OUH, IPHT are testing different samples while working on the hardware component and its optomechanical design. As responsible for the data analysis and AI modelling, IPHT will start the first test measurement over the second year of the project. The purpose of their work is to ensure that data will be processed by AI machine learning models and displayed in an easy-to-understand dashboard for healthcare professionals. This will allow online telemonitoring as well as consultations by remote healthcare professionals. 

The work carried out so far is ultimately to prepare for the clinical trials that will test TeleGraft in an international study with participants from Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania, Germany and Spain. This will start after the second year of the project and the whole consortium is fully dedicated to making the first phase of this project a success to be able to move forward. in preparation for this next phase, this meeting was the occasion for the health economist of SDU involved in the project to present their plan and ideas as they will perform cost effectiveness analysis to establish an economic model based on the clinical trial results. 

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