The INCISIVE project reached in the best way possible the end of its EC-funded lifetime, receiving exceptionally positive feedback from the European Commission on almost all fronts. The project successfully reached its objectives by delivering a final, fully functional prototype of an AI-powered decision-support toolbox for healthcare professionals and a reusable federated data repository of millions of medical images and clinical data, thus, making a significant contribution to ongoing research efforts on improving cancer diagnosis and care for four prevalent cancers: namely, breast, colorectal, lung and prostate.
The project’s final review report highlighted INCISIVE's "many strong and pertinent exploitable results", noting the AI toolbox and the federated imaging repository as key assets "for their exploitation potential". Reviewers noted that “the pilot studies showcased innovative project results and a clear proof-of-concept for AI in patient stratification in 4 major tumour types”, and expectedly acknowledged remaining challenges around the refinement of the AI services in support of their real-life deployment in clinical practice. They also emphasized INCISIVE's impressive achievement of “numerous met KPIs demonstrating its potential for substantial scientific, technical, commercial, and societal impacts”. In addition, the review report concluded that “the project enhances European innovation capacity and creates market opportunities in AI for health imaging systems”.
In recognition of the strong innovation potential of the project’s results, notably the innovation potential of the federated imaging repository to which Maggioli was one of the key technical contributors, the European Commission promoted a feature article on INCISIVE’s results at CORDIS results in brief and highlighted MAGGIOLI as a key innovator through the EU Innovation Radar platform, which focuses on identifying high potential innovations and key innovators in EU-funded research and innovation projects. The Innovation Radar features organisations for their pivotal role in advancing European research and technology, supporting them to gain international visibility. This distinction not only highlights MAGGIOLI’s contributions to high-impact innovation, but also opens new opportunities for collaboration with business and academic partners, as well as potential investors.
MAGGIOLI’s coordination role in INCISIVE has played a pivotal role in all aforementioned project achievements. As the final review report stresses in multiple sections " The project has been efficiently and effectively managed, which is a key strength. MAGGIOLI’s coordination was further praised by the EC by noting in the review report that “despite the varied challenges and timelines, commendable coordination of disparate workstreams allowed these different aspects to come together, while staying close to the planned budget and resources”.
Looking forward, MAGGIOLI is actively working towards INCISIVE’s interoperability with other major existing health data repositories and research infrastructures through the Cancer Image Europe initiative, in which MAGGIOLI is co-leading one of the key technical strands of work on health data interoperability and federation, thus further showcasing its commitment to developing impactful solutions that address critical healthcare needs across Europe.