Each year, more than a million acute stroke cases occur in Europe, with nearly 10 million survivors facing long-term consequences. Data on strokes is plentiful but fragmented, making it difficult to exploit in data-driven treatment strategies. But the toolbox of the high-energy physicist is well adapted to this task. This is why CERN has joined more than 20 public and private partners in the UMBRELLA project, which aims to transform stroke care across Europe. This five-year project is supported by the EU's Innovative Health Initiative and launched in October 2024.
UMBRELLA plans to use advanced digital technologies to develop AI-powered predictive models for stroke management. By standardising real-world stroke data and using tools such as imaging technologies, wearable devices and virtual rehabilitation platforms, UMBRELLA aims to refine every stage of care - from diagnosis to recovery. Based on post-stroke data, AI-driven insights will help clinicians to uncover root causes of strokes, improve treatment precision and predict patient outcomes, reshaping how stroke care is delivered.
Underpinning this endeavour is UMBRELLA's "U-platform" - a data ecosystem based on CERN's machine-learning platform, CAFEIN. CAFEIN was initiated thanks to seed funding from CERN's medical applications budget and uses a decentralised or "federated" approach to train machine-learning algorithms without exchanging data. The U-platform will enable secure, privacy-preserving training of advanced AI algorithms for personalised stroke diagnostics, risk prediction and treatment decisions without sharing sensitive patient data between institutions. Building on CERN's expertise, including its success in federated AI modelling for brain pathologies as part of the EU TRUSTroke project, the CAFEIN team is poised to handle the increasing complexity and scale of data sets required by UMBRELLA.
This ambitious initiative not only showcases CERN's role in pioneering federated-learning technologies but also underscores the broader societal benefits brought by basic science. By pushing technologies beyond the state-of-the-art, CERN and other particle physics laboratories have fuelled innovations that have an impact on our everyday lives. The outcomes of the UMBRELLA project hold the potential to redefine stroke care, delivering life-saving advancements to millions.
