UMBRELLA

A stroke is a life-threatening condition that occurs when the blood supply to part of the brain is cut off by either a blood clot (85% of cases) or a burst blood vessel. Strokes affect some 15-17 million people a year, and they are a leading cause of death and disability. Urgent treatment is therefore essential to save the patient’s life and prevent further damage to the brain. Due to the potential for long-lasting consequences, stroke care involves a lengthy, complex pathway requiring coordination among multiple healthcare professionals. Unfortunately, many patients experience impaired care due to poor coordination between their healthcare providers.

The UMBRELLA project aims to revolutionise the way we manage strokes by implementing a comprehensive approach that addresses gaps along the whole stroke care pathway, from diagnosis and emergency treatment, right through to rehabilitation and the prevention of further strokes.

At the heart of UMBRELLA is a federated data platform dubbed the ‘U-platform’. The project will harmonise real world stroke data from participating clinical centres to a common data model. These datasets will then be used to locally create and validate artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms designed to advance stroke diagnosis, risk prediction, and decision-making at different points in the stroke care pathway.

The new AI algorithms will undergo further training and testing on other datasets via a federated learning framework. This approach ensures the AI models benefit from being trained on multiple datasets, but because the data is not shared or pooled, security and privacy are ensured.

The project also aims to create standardised stroke management protocols and procedures and implement them across the participating clinical centres. These protocols will include the use of digital technologies to collect and visualise data, engage patients, and facilitate decision making at all stages of stroke care.

Finally, the project will develop a regulatory roadmap to secure the approvals needed to implement the project outputs in patient care. They will also establish a sustainability plan to ensure the continued existence of resources like the U-Platform beyond the end of the project.