HEDIMED is ready for 2022!
We hope you had a relaxing Christmas break – we are now ready to get back to business and start new activities in the project!
Towards the end of last year, HEDIMED admin team was busy with submitting the project’s first periodic report, describing the progress carried out during the first 18 months of the project, to European Union and our first external Review. All went well and we are happy to have received mainly positive feedback from the Project Officer and the external experts and reviewers! By the end of the first period HEDIMED has achieved several milestones and reported approximately 30 deliverables. The main scientific achievements include the creation of a detailed inventory of methodologies and their specifications available in different HEDIMED institutions, a careful characterization of clinical cohorts and available samples that will be studied, and the identification of the research priorities based on existing resources and the existing knowledge gaps in the fields of type 1 diabetes, celiac disease, allergies, and asthma. This work forms the solid basis for the scientific research work which is now in good progress. So far, we feel relieved by the fact that the project has not faced major roadblocks caused by COVID-19 or other obstacles.
Team work at EU portal
Before and during 2021, we organised our project well in working groups, work packages and Consortium Committees. As the year proceeded, we had two big Consortiums calls; first one in May and second one in December. The latter was originally planned to be a face-to-face meeting in Prague, Czechia. After having everything planned in detail, the pandemic situation urged us to replace it by a teleconference. This Consortium call had a key focus on the concrete progress of the laboratory work and the science. Also, we got an inspiring presentation of the upcoming public platform and toolbox – a good vision of the key outcomes of our project. We cannot wait to share them with our followers!
Briefly, after a bunch of meetings, e-mails and calls we are excited to announce that we will finally proceed from planning and making agreements to the science and analyses! We are proud of the actuality and importance of our research aims and the methods to be used, including the pioneering layout of the studies we are about to conduct. We are also happy to announce that like other exposome projects of EHEN (see more in their website here), HEDIMED research results will be open access to wide public. This will improve the availability of the state-of-the-art knowledge to all the stakeholders, including patient organisations and policymakers. You may look at our publications in the publications section.
Heikki Hyöty and laboratory staff at work in Tampere University
For now, we want to thank everyone in HEDIMED for the strong commitment, not forgetting the skilful and hard work and a positive attitude which have taken us this far and made this progress possible! We encourage everyone who would like to know more about the goals and achievements of HEDIMED to contact us (more info here). We will now continue the mission and get a new phase in the project started!
Banner photo: Laura Vanzo / Visit Tampere
