In the European Union, around 5 million people suffer from psychotic disorders, of which schizophrenia is one of the most widely-known. Around 30-50% of schizophrenic patients are considered treatment-resistant. This presents persistent symptoms, requiring long periods of hospital care and being at greater risk of mortality and multi morbidity.

Understanding schizophrenia

The m-RESIST project started on 1 January 2015, and during the three years of the project a model of analysis will be implemented, in order to move forward in understanding resistant schizophrenia.

Besides, project activities will help to predict the patient’s behaviour and allow the establishment of a reaction alert system, as well as to draw up protocols and recommendations to give doctors support in the clinical decisions.

By linking data mining tools with a high-level predictive model, m-RESIST will bring forth a new technical focus for health treatments, which will allow the behaviour patterns found in many patient data to be analysed in order to identify the risks and shortcomings of the treatments.

mHealth tools

"It is a highly innovative project", says Dr. Iluminada Corripio, leader of the m-RESIST project at the Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau. "It is the first time in Spain and Europe that a therapeutic project is developed for schizophrenic patients resistant to treatment using mHealth tools. These tools will be developed to allow patients to play a more active role in managing their own illness, and we hope this will have a positive effect on adherence to treatment and a reduction of persistent serious symptoms, relapses and hospitalisation."

The m-RESIST solution will be tested in 3 pilot trials with real users in Catalonia, Israel and Hungary.

"We hope that m-Resist will bring a real benefit for schizophrenic patients by extending the area of application of the personalised pharmacological and psychological treatment, not only improving the persistence of care and the participation of the carers, but also by creating a broad database to allow development in characterising the profile of the resistant schizophrenic", says Dr. Asaf Caspi, Director of Ambulatory Psychiatric Services at the Sheba Medical Center (Israel), who leads m-RESIST project at Gertner Institute.

Budget

Coordinated by the Fundació TicSalut (Ministry of Health of the Government of Catalonia), the m-RESIST project is financed by the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation framework program, and has a budget of €4 million.

m-RESIST relies on the clinical leadership of the Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau (Barcelona), and the technological leadership of the iMinds Belgian research institute. A total of 12 entities from the public and private sector participate in the project, including hospitals, research centres, universities and companies from 7 European countries.

Participants in the project:

Fundació TicSalut (Spain), Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau (Spain), Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu (Spain), The Gertner Institute for Epidemiology & Health Policy Research (Israel), Oulun Yliopisto (Finland), iMinds VZW (Belgium), IBM Global Services España SA (Spain), Athens Technology Center SA (Greece), Semmelweis Egyetem (Hungary), Agència De Qualitat I Avaluació Sanitàries De Catalunya (Spain), AB.ACUS SRL (Italy) and Institute of Communication and Computer Systems (Greece).

Further information and contact:

• Fundació TicSalut: m-RESIST Project Coordinator Margarita Hospedales Salomó. Tel: +34 935532642
• ATC: m-RESIST Communication Manager Anna Triantafillou. Tel: +30 210 6874300
• Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau: m-RESIST Clinical Manager Iluminada Corripio Collado. Tel: +34 935537840
• iMinds: m-RESIST Technical Manager Tanguy Coenen. Tel: +32 496875679

Twitter: @mResist_eu