PATHway TEAM pictured above: Dr Noel McCaffrey (SHHP), Prof Niall Moyna (SHHP), Dr Paul Davis (DCUBS), Dr Kieran Moran (SHHP, Project Coordinator), Dr Suzanne Little (Insight), Dr Catherine Woods (SHHP, Clinical Coordinator). Not in photo Prof Noel O’Connor (Insight) and Prof. Regina Connolly (DCUBS)

The PATHway to H2020 Funding Success

13/10/2014

DCU’s success in EU Horizon 2020 funding continues as the latest recipients of the Health Based funding call awards are announced.

Congratulations to our colleagues Dr Kieran Moran and his team on securing €5 million H2020 award for their project ‘PATHway’ - Technology enabled behavioural change as a pathway towards better self-management of cardio-vascular disease. The central concept of the project is Physical Activity Towards Health (PATH). The project is led by DCU and involves 9 partners: four other Universities, 3 SMEs and 1 Hospital. The project submission had an awards budget of €5 million, of which in excess of €1,000,000 has been allocated to DCU.

PATHway will enable patients to both better understand and deal with their own condition and assist them towards leading a healthier lifestyle in general. This will be made possible by the provision of an internet-enabled sensor-based home exercise platform that allows remote participation in Cardiac Rehabilitation exercise programs at any time, by a small number of patients from the comfort of their own living room. The platform will also provide individualized rehabilitation programs that use regular, socially inclusive exercise sessions.

Project Coordinator Dr Kieran Moran (School of Health and Human Performance) said “This is a unique opportunity to utilise DCU's significant multi-disciplinary expertise in rehabilitation exercise, behavioural change, sensor-based technology enabled platforms, business and innovation, to help tackle cardiovascular disease, which is the leading cause of premature death and disability world-wide. With only between 5-10% of patients engaging regularly with community based structured programmes we believe that our home-based PATHway system has the potential to help the other 90%”.

“In addition, given that we want to bring about a population-wide change in health we will pay particular attention to ensuring that PATHway is commercially viable, drawing upon the strengths and expertise of our colleagues in DCU which is a gaining pace as University of Enterprise – particularly in the areas of Innovation and Research”.