Vascovid’s coordinator Turgut Durduran welcomed the rest of the Consortium members and gave a brief introduction on the project’s status. As he also highlighted, the partners meet regularly to discuss the technical aspects and the exploitation, so they have established close synergies and a fluent workflow.

The project officer’s Elisa Irlandese presented and introduced the newly formed European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA). This agency manages the European programmes and initiatives on behalf of the European Commission and is responsible for implementing the research programmes.

Following Mrs Irlandese’s talk, the ICFO Communications team presented the actions done during the first six months of the project, and the plans, highlighting both the project appearances in the press and the researchers’ participation in events. Project management was also explained by Núria Charles-Harris, who reminded partners of the future reporting periods and also informed them about the situation of the expected new member of the Consortium, the PioNIRS start-up.

Then, the work package leaders explained, for each one, the actions undertaken so far, the milestones achieved and the future needs and expectations. Davide Contini from PoliMi presented their advancements on the deployment of the Vascovid modules. Tijl Houtbeckers and Luc Demarteau, researchers from Splendo, talked about the first steps towards the hardware integration modules and the preliminary interface of the monitor, cloud and AI platform. Working in parallel with work packages three and four, they want to finalize the modules and start the system integration phase.

Partners involved in the third work package are in charge of developing the protocols, validate the NIRS /DCS system, and standardize the phantoms. Sanathana Konugolu, CEO of BioPixS, explained they have already developed standardized protocols for phantom testing and validation. They are well in line with the foreseen plans.

Postdoc researcher at ICFO Marta Zanoletti pointed out that the fourth work package requires the involvement of all the partners. The tasks include, among others, developing a regulatory roadmap, building the clinical prototype and testing it, and preparing the corresponding documentation. The goal is to have the first clinical prototype ready by the end of August.

Doctor Jaume Mesquida, a clinician at the Corporació Sanitària Parc Taulí de Sabadell, talked about the clinical validation of the Vascovid device. They will test it both in Covid-19 patients and in healthy individuals. As Dr Mesquida pointed out, the workload of the clinical testing will be centred on the second part of the year. Later, during the clinical discussion, Dr Jaume Mesquida briefly presented and introduced the preliminary results of the Hemocovid-19 project, which several hospitals around the globe are testing.

Finally, Udo Weigel from HemoPhotonics presented the exploitation plans for the project. Partners have been developing a strategy on exploitation for the project results. It includes performing market analysis and setting up exploitation and industrialization plans, that will end up with a roadmap towards large-scale production of the VASCOVID device. HemoPhotonics is working closely with the rest of the Consortium to collect their intentions and consider other application areas, markets or industrial configurations.

After, researchers discussed the regulations and technology transfer. Eduardo Garrido, from Asphalion, reviewed the regulation’s state and the documentation needed from the partners. The company is preparing a booklet regarding the steps towards the CE marking. The Consortium debated the verification processes – correctly meeting the requirements – and validation – fulfilment of expectations and purposes – of the device.