The first Annual Meeting takes place in Barcelona
The First Annual Meeting of the COVIRNA project took place on 11-12 November 2021 in Barcelona, Spain. The meeting was co-organised by the Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH), the project coordinator and the Institute of Research of Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau (IR-HSCSP). It brought together the COVIRNA partners to assess progress in the project implementation in the first year and plan activities for the second year.
The meeting kicked off with an address by the COVIRNA Project Coordinator, Dr Yvan Devaux, who welcomed members of the COVIRNA Consortium and introduced the topics to be covered over the course of the two days. The first day of the meeting was dedicated to discussing the work carried out in the first year of the project. Work Package (WP) leaders presented the objectives, the work programme and progress in the project implementation within their WPs.
The main achievement in the first year was securing the samples to conduct the research. Despite some challenges in sharing data among health institutions, the project is close to reach the targets set for a successful research. The samples and associated clinical data are now ready to be analysed. Additionally, extensive preparatory work was conducted by the technical partners who developed the predictive models to assess the sampling using AI and machine learning.
The second day of the project was dedicated to developing an action plan for the second year of the project. The WP leaders presented actionable strategies and methodologies to implement them. They also explored how best to create synergies between different WPs to achieve the COVIRNA goal and objectives.
Partners engaged in a creative workshop to better identify the audiences and messages to convey around COVIRNA. They collectively agreed on the importance of the research they are conducting and the positive impact it could have on patients and healthcare outcomes. They were vocal about the importance of fostering trust in scientific research among the general public as a key objective of the project. Also, it is particularly interesting to see how the EU is investing in innovative actions such as COVIRNA with the aim of improving healthcare outcomes in people.
The Second Interim Annual Meeting of the COVIRNA project will take place on 23-25 March in Budapest, Hungary, and will be co-organised by the LIH and Pharmahungary.
» To learn more about the COVIRNA project, watch the official COVIRNA project video