GMV participates in the Human Brain Project, inputting its experience in healthcare Big Data, healthcare ICT, simulation and high-performance computing

Madrid has hosted the 1^st Forum of The Human Brain Project (HBP) and its Impact on Spanish industry, organized by Tecnalia, with the participation of the industrial group called “Spanish Industrial HUB”, of which GMV is a member, and with the support of the Spanish Industry Ministry and Spain’s Industrial Technology Development Center (Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnológico Industrial: CDTI). This event showcased the latest breakthroughs in human-brain research and its impact in the diagnosis and treatment of neurological diseases. It also looked at the field of artificial intelligence and ICTs in general.

The Human Brain Project (HBP) is an EU-funded medico-scientific and technological initiative that aims to reproduce human-brain characteristics technologically to achieve breakthroughs in the field of medicine and neuroscience.

To pull off a goal as ambitious as increasing our understanding of the human brain, EU governments will be investing a billion euros. This initiative chimes in with other similar ones such as Barack Obama’s Brain Initiative back in April 2013.

Impact on industry

HBP involves the participation of 112 institutions from 24 countries to achieve breakthroughs in the field of medicine, technology and neuroscience. This initiative, in turn, aims to drive European industry of the involved sectors. In Spain the companies GMV, Artica, Atos, Bitbrain, Era7 Bioinformatics, Idener, Insyte and Lilly, coordinated by Tecnalia and with the support of the Ministry of Economics and Competitiveness, have set up an industrial group (the Spanish industrial HUB) that aims to transfer the European project’s research results to Spanish industry.

Chris Ebell, Executive Director of the project and director of the management unit of the European flagship explained at the event that, for the project to work, “we need research into new ICTs or advanced supercomputing technologies”. With this aim in mind “different research platforms have been set up such as Neuroinformatics (access to shared brain data), Brain Simulation, High Performance Analytics and Computing, Medical Informatics (access to patient data), Neuromorphic Computing (access to brain-inspired computers), and Neurorobotics (use of robots to test brain simulations)”.

GMV’s performance framework

The platforms of Medical Informatics, Brain Simulation, High Performance Analytics and Computing are those in which GMV “will apply the across-the-board knowledge that we have been building up in the various fields we work in, such as aerospace, defense, mobility solutions, ICT or e-Health”, explained Rafael Navajo, GMV’s Health Business Development  Manager.

The healthcare sector’s takeup of ICTs now “dates back more than twenty years, with the advent of digital radiology in the eighties”. Since then Spain “has recorded advances such as implementation of the electronic medical record, adaptation to an inter-hospital interoperability scheme or the electronic prescription”. But there are still many other possibilities to be explored, not only in healthcare management but also medical practice. To do so, “we need to overcome political, regulatory and organizational barriers”, because “technology is no longer an inhibiting factor but an enabler to this end”, claimed Navajo.