Minutes of Project Management Team
Paris, 16 January 2006
Meeting Title:
HeC Project Management Team meeting
Date of Meeting:
16 January 2007
14.30/16.30
Minutes Prepared By:
William McFadden
Antonella Trezzani
Location:
Health-e-child (HeC)
IST-2004-027749
Necker Hospital, Paris
1. Purpose of Meeting
Preparation of EU review, annual report, DOW II phase, consortium spending
2. Attendance at Meeting
Name
Joerg Freund (JF)
Martin Huber (MH)
Edwin Morley Fletcher (EMF)
Alessandro Sattanino (AS)
Antonella Trezzani
William McFadden
Harry Dimitrooulos (HD)
Manolis Tsagkaris
David Manset (DM)
Jerome Revillard
Richard McClatchey (RM)
Tony Solomonides
Dmitry Rogulin (RM)
Alessandro Verri (AV)
Giacomo Pongiglione (GP)
Xavier Pennec (XP
Florida Estrella (FE)
Mikk Tamme
Tamas Hauer (TH)
Andrea Zanolla (AZ)
Leader of WP
WP1, WP4
WP12
WP16
WP8, WP13
WP7, WP14
WP5
WP6
WP 9, WP 10
WP11
Institution
Siemens
Siemens
Lynkeus
Lynkeus
Lynkeus
Lynkeus
UoA
UoA
Maat
Maat
UWE
UWE
UWE
DISI
IGG -FGG
INRIA
CERN
ASPER
UWE
EGF
E-mail
Joerg.freund@siemens.com
Martin.Huber@siemens.com
emf@lynkeus.com
Sattanino@lynkeus.com
a.trezzani@lynkeus.com
w.mcfadden@lynkeus.com
harryd@di.uoa.gr
mmt@di.uoa.gr
dmanset@maat-g.com
jrevillard@maat-g.com
Richard.Mcclatchey@cern.ch
Tony.Solomonides@uwe.ac.uk
Dmitry.Rogulin@cern.ch
verri@disi.unige.it
giacomopongiglione@ospedale-gaslini.ge.it
Xavier.Pennec@sophia.inria.fr
Florida.estrella@cern.ch
Tamas.Hauer@cern.ch
andrea.zanolla@eurogene.org
3. Meeting Agenda
1. Proposed dates for the EC Annual Review and outline of HeC organisational choices for the
EC Annual Review
2. Deliverables at month 12
3. Fulfilment of Major Milestone 1
4. HeC Training Activities
5. Information on hardware procurement and software configuration for clinical partners
6. Scheduling of next PMT and Review meetings
7. HeC public dissemination: Musicagenetica Festival, Bologna, May 2007
8. Dissemination: Newsletter – addresses lists
File: Paris, 16 January 2007 - PMT minutes;
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Minutes of Project Management Team
Paris, 16 January 2006
Health-e-child (HeC)
IST-2004-027749
9. Website contents
4. Meeting Notes
1. Proposed dates for the EC Annual Review and outline of HeC organisational choices for the EC
Annual Review
Dates for EC annual review: 6th and 7th of March 2007 are decided upon.
2. Deliverables at month 12
D1.3 Annual Report: Activity report, Management report, Timesheets and allocation of resources,
Levels of spending budgeted money, Risk assessment, Publishable executive summary, Form C,
External Audit
D 1.5 Self-assessment plan, updating
D 16.1 Dissemination Strategy plan, updating
D 3.2 Annual ethical report
D1.3 Annual Report
a - Periodic activity report containing:
• an overview of the activities carried out by the Consortium during the first 12 months
• a description of progress towards the objectives of the HeC project
• a description of progress towards the milestones and deliverables foreseen
• the identification of the problems encountered and corrective action taken
• An updated plan for using and disseminating the knowledge needs to be included as a separate part
of this report
b - Management report
• Justification of the resources deployed by each contractor: Timesheets (efforts) and allocation of
resources.
• Form C Financial statement, provided by each contractor for the first 12 months
• Summary financial report consolidating the claimed costs of all the contractors in an aggregate form,
based on the information provided in Form C
c - Justification of the resources deployed
• a detailed justification of the costs incurred and of the resources deployed by each contractor linking
them to activities implemented and justifying their necessity.
Content of the justification:
• a list of WP with efforts planned, efforts reported, progress %, work description for each partner in
the WP
• a Person-month status table: per WP, with planned and actual mm, per partner
AS: The Person Month Status Table must be checked by all members of the consortium.
MT: In the case of an audit, will the Net Board be audited?
EMF: Figures must be put in
JF: But it will not be the final correct figures
XP: Can we not say that the numbers are provisional?
AS: You can say that you did e.g. 100 days at €10,000 and these numbers must be entered onto the
platform, where they will not be reviewed or audited. The request for each partner is to fill in a Justification
table by activity (A01-A10), with the figures referring to each costs category, total efforts for the activity, and
a description of expenditure stating how it is linked to the specific work carried out (e.g. tasks, work
packages, …). How do we make a cost justifiable? Each cost must me assigned to an activity. Every year a
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number or management reports are rejected because the costs are not linked clearly to activities and major
items of expenses for each partner are not clearly explained (justifying their necessity). An additional
element is requested from AC partners, consisting of a table with efforts and costs (additional and recurrent).
This means appraising the cost of internal personnel involved in the project.
JF: Quite a big problem that Siemens has a different arrangement with the EC in regards to their MM rebate.
The numbers that Siemens delivers will not match. Will provide the official numbers from Siemens. The
platform is not capable of following the very complicated Siemens system.
AS: Certified costs must be reconciled in the platform and the correct amount of efforts must be clearly
stated. From the platform we can produce many tables useful for the activity and management reports and
therefore all figures need to be consistent and add up to the same totals.
d - Form C
JF: Siemens is responsible for all partners finances, Form C must be handed in to JF one week in advance
of deadline (7th February) both soft and hard copy.
JF: Form C figures are Audited and those are then numbers that must be justified.
AS: An electronic form should be sent to Lynkeus too, by the end of January.
e - Report on the distribution between contractors during the first 12 months of the EC financial
contribution (just a reminder to JF)
f - Publishable executive summary - Each WP leader must provide 10 lines which summarise their
WP achievements/setbacks during the first 12 months of the project.
EMF: Publishable executive summary must be carefully checked by each WP leader as the 10 lines become
public when they are published with the whole Executive Summary.
g - External Audit - (from the EC-HeC contract) “Contractors requesting an EC financial contribution for one
or more reporting periods of less than EUR 150,000, need not submit an audit certificate, until the
cumulative request for EC financial contribution is equal to or exceeds € 150,000 for the reporting periods for
which an audit certificate has not yet been submitted”
• D 1.5 Updated Self-assessment plan
EMF: Is it necessary to revise the criteria adopted a year ago? If so, then the new criteria should already be
applied in assessing the outcomes for the AR. For instance, regarding Milestone 9.3 (First check point for
data collection at all three hospitals), in the Self-Assessment plan, delivered to the EC in March 2006, it was
stated, for WP 9, that “the lower limit below which result is not acceptable is 20% of total cases at month 12”,
namely 20% of
• RVO 200 cases (in first 18 months)
• Cardiomyopathies 100 cases (in first 18 months)
• JIA 200/250 cases (in first 18 months)
• Brain Tumour 50 cases (in first 18 months)
We were told by GP that the actual numbers are different, and this must be explained.
Again, regarding Milestone 10.1 (Metadata database partially populated. First check point for ground truth
and clinical knowledge collection), with reference to ground truth (annotated data) and clinical knowledge
gathering, the Self-Assessment Plan indicated as acceptable lower limit 5% of total cases at month 12.
Something similar applies to the Scientific Committee which, according to the Self-Assessment Plan, will
organize a Scientific Project Review about 1-2 months before the annual EC Review, producing eventually
“a set of documents assessing the current scientific status of the project”, make “suggestions for adopting
different or improved self-assessment criteria”, hand these over to the Executive Board, in order to
implement, if necessary, “appropriate changes and use the new release of self-assessment criteria in the
Reports submitted to the Commission”. The current text in the Self Assessment plan states that in order to
validate/modify the chosen indicators, also on the basis of the SC yearly evaluation, the re-definition of the
Self-Assessment indicators should represent a deliverable at the end of each Reporting period. Do we need
to change this wording?
•
D 16.1 Updated Dissemination Strategy plan
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• Exploitation plan (Siemens)
• Dissemination plan (Lynkeus)
The updating should take into account the deliverable finally due at month 48 (Final Plan for Using and
Disseminating the Knowledge), which means the report on the contractors’ intentions for the protection,
use and dissemination of the knowledge generated under the project.
EMF: The exploitation plan must be re-examined at month 24 (Siemens)
•
D 3.2 Annual Ethical Report
• Ethical and legal issues identified
• How they have been addressed
EMF: Please note the need for independent experts for the ethical review.
A reminder from Article 9.4 of the EC-HeC Contract
The contractors shall ensure that the research carried out fully complies with the following additional
requirements resulting from the ethical review, in view of the fact that the proposal is very complex and
raises an array of ethical issues that need accurate management. The major issues are:
• the use of sedation and X-rays. The proposal does not explain whether the sedation and X-rays
referred to are part of the essential medical treatment or is it additionally performed specifically for
research purposes?
• Duration of conservation of biomedical sample and sensitive medical information is not clearly
mentioned. It is not clear what happens to the biological samples after the termination of the project.
• There is no provision for new request of consent by the children when they become legally able to
consent.
• All consent forms should allow children or representatives to consent to specific uses only and/or opt
out of other future uses.
• “No predictive data will be collected or treated" and there will be no testing for genetic susceptibilities,
yet reference is made to children with disease or children with predisposition. Moreover, genetic data
which, at the time of collection, is not predictive, may gain a predictive value as research advances.
Collection, use and disclosure of predictive information raise specific ethical and legal issues that are
not addressed in the proposal.
• The project plans for establishing an ethical and legal review committee. The panel strongly believes
that the in house committee concerned with legal and ethical issues would benefit from the advice of
independent experts in ethics and law in view of the complex issues involved.
• Moreover, management of ethical and related legal issues should be a horizontal action and needs
special WP to address all related concerns. Representatives of the new WP should be integrated into
the decision making management boards.
• The dual role of the medical practitioner may be an issue.
• Medical intervention procedures carried out in relation to research related activities must be clearly
outlined and justified. In particular, clarification must be provided regarding the use of sedation and
X-rays referred to. Are these procedures part of the essential medical treatment or are they
additionally performed specifically for research purposes?
• Introduction of a new WP on ethical and related legal issues which should incorporate all the activities
as mentioned in the proposal, the concerns mentioned in the comments, and related legal concerns.
Bottom line: This WP should incorporate independent expertise.
Representatives of this WP should be integrated into the decision making management boards.
3. Fulfilment of Major Milestone 1
Milestone 3.1 Preparation and acceptance by all necessary bodies of study protocols and informed
consent documents (delayed because of the Ethical Committees approval)
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As stated in HeC Contract (Article 9.4 1): ‘The contractors shall provide the Commission with a written
confirmation that it has received favourable opinions of the relevant ethics committees and, if applicable, the
regulatory approvals of the competent national or local authority(ies) in the country in which the research is
to be carried out before beginning any Commission approved research requiring such opinions or approvals.
The copy of the official approval from the relevant national or local ethics committees must also be provided
by the Commission.’
4. HeC Training Activities
Forth coming course: The Genetics of rheumatic and auto-inflammatory diseases directed by
Alberto Martini, IGG (1st – 4th April 2007), University Residential Centre of Bertinoro (Bologna)
Two further courses are already planned:
• “Cardiogenesis and Congenital Cardiopathies: From Developmental Models to Clinical
Applications” (2008)
• “Infantile Brain Tumours and the Use of Integrated Databases”, which is intended to be the first
demonstration of the results of the present Health-e-Child project using the results in the field of
infantile brain tumours (gliomas in particular) (2009)
EMF: EGF is open to suggestions about how make HeC the primary focus of the conferences.
AZ: Will circulate info about conference to the consortium.
EMF: The issue to keep in mind for EGF in planning the conferences should be: will also HeC techies be
able to take advantage of these meetings?
e-Learning:
• Transformation of courses into internet courses foreseen
• Streaming on demand available
• HeC partners will have access to the courses in streaming on demand modality
• For technical and organizational details: giuseppe.curcio@eurogene.org
Needs to take into account:
• Need of integrating clinical with technical approach
• Focus more clearly on HeC core objectives
AZ: Will discuss proposals for conferences and training activities with MH
5. Information on hardware procurement and software configuration for clinical partners
Hardware Requirements:
• Full Connectivity: 2 Servers (DELL ~4k€ each)
• Gateway
• Grid Access
• Light Connectivity: 1 Server (DELL ~4k€)
• Gateway
• Maintenance will be assumed by WP14
DM: Hubs will need to purchase two servers @ €4k (4 CPUs, 4k RAM)
6. Scheduling of next PMT and Project Review meetings
PMT
April 16-20 Apr '07: IGG, Genoa
July 09-13 Jul '07: UWE, Bristol
October 08-12 Oct '07: UoA, Athens
October 14.-18. Jan ’08: CERN, Geneva
Project Reviews
July 09-13 Jul '07: UWE, Bristol
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December
EC: JF to circulate previously arranged dates for 2007 meetings
7. HeC public dissemination: Musicagenetica Festival, Bologna, May 2007
• Bologna is a UNESCO “City of Music”
• Within its Festival on Music and Genetics (10-22 May 2007) organized by European Genetics
Foundation, Fondazione Mariani, Orchestra Mozart, Comune di Bologna, University of Bologna
http://www.musicagenetica.it/), there will be also an International Workshop on the Biology and
Genetics of Music (20-22 May)
• May 23, 2007, could be the day for a ½ Day forum on advances in healthcare systems, showcasing
HeC (with an active participation of the EC e-Health Unit) to policy makers as an anticipation of the
new type of personalised medicine which can be afforded by scientific and technological
breakthroughs
JF: Would prefer to have a booth at big conferences, this seems a bit science light
EMF: Feels that this is a fine opportunity to spread the word on IPs and HeC as forerunners of advances in
healthcare, possibly involving also the Health Minister and the EC e-Health Unit.
JF: How is this related to paediatrics, grid and the other parts of HeC?
EMF: should we be going in this direction and now or 2007?
UWE: Could take main stage in 2008 with organising a Healthgrid section of the whole annual Healthgrid
conference.
EMF: That is an interesting idea but an unfeasibly large undertaking if we have to take of the whole
conference..
TW: Genoa has a science festival in September with very large non-specialized attendance.
MH: Genoa seems like a better forum, since there would be also the Gaslini Hospital as supporting element.
EMF: November in Genoa can be an excellent alternative platform for a similar ½ day conference
GP and TW: will get in touch with the organisers and find out what would be possible in 2007 or
2008.
8. Dissemination: Newsletter – addresses lists
2007 Conferences to be attended:
Revised Toledo list:
• MIRAGE in Rocquencourt (March)
• CARS in Berlin (June)
• IPMI in Kerkrade (July)
• EBMC in Lyon (August)
• eGovernment-eHealth in Milan (July)
MH: Too many conferences were not in Europe.
RM: EC funds are only available for conferences in EU
HD: Conference attendance was only fundable in the first year, in the second year we should be aiming to
partake in conferences.
UWE: Has a proposal for a Healthgrid Conference
MH: to update list of conferences.
MH: Does not want to make a five year plan for conference attendance
RM: There should be a strategic list of conferences we should be seen at as a group
TS: Will send the consortium his conference proposals
MH: will work on some vital events that should be attended
Requirements Conferences and Events in 2007
What dissemination tools would be desired for 2007?
• Posters, Brochures & Leaflets?
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• Leaflets (E.g. EGEE Conference 2006)
• Posters will be produced to show the objectives of the project.
• e.g. “e-patient”, “e-child concept”, Scenario
• Booths?
• “Although the project DoW made mention of plans to set up a HeC booth…the idea
has been disbanded because of inherent costs for construction of the booth itself
(and related costs.)” (EB Munich July, see MoM)
• “Funding resources permitting, the set up of an HeC booth at 2 or 3 select events
during the project’s lifetime will be evaluated on a case by case basis.” D.16.1
Dissemination Strategy Plan p.19
• Layout for a potential booth will be produced before M18
JF: No change to consortium’s position on both policy.
9. Newsletter
1° Quarterly Newsletter has been produced by TW, is uploaded on our website, and would require, for the
new issue, also to be distributed. All HeC members are requested to continually inform TW of potentially
interested persons, institutions and associations. Mailing lists are still missing Each partner is requested to
send a chosen mailing list of people potentially interested in receiving HeC’s newsletter.
JF: Does the e mail and web site have a simple unsubscribe?
EMF: Yes
10. Website
Interesting topics from the “State of the Art” report:
1. Biological and Medical Data in the Health-e-Child Project
1. Genomic and Molecular Data
2. Imaging modalities
3. Clinical data and standards
4. Data Standards, Integration and Interoperability
5. Semantic Integration and Ontologies
2. Common Tools and Techniques
1. Medical Image Analysis
2. Text Mining
3. Streams Mining
4. Machine Learning
5. Statistical Inference
3. Disease Models
1. Cardiac Diseases
2. Inflammatory Diseases
3. Brain Tumours
4. Decision Support Systems
1. Clinical Decision Support Systems
2. Current Approaches
3. Relevant Systems and Projects
4. The AMIA Roadmap for clinical DSS
5. Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining
1. Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining in Biomedical Databases
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2. Current Approaches
3. KD and DM in Paediatrics
4. Relevant Systems and Projects
5. Future Approaches
TH: Would like the front page of the web site to be text, so that a search engine can find it.
AV: No one is interested in the state of the art, I’m not releasing a single part of my work on the net before it
is published.
MH: It is true that we need some interesting lines about what the project is actually about. Otherwise people
see a €16.7 m project that seems to be doing nothing.
EMF: The EC also expects us to develop an interested ‘community’
TW and WMF to populate with appropriate contents the public part of HeC website by getting links
and .PDF copies of articles written by consortium member that are related to HeC to go with brief
outlines of the WPs and short texts on HeC major topics of interest extracted from delivered
documents.
5. Action Items
(add rows as necessary)
Action
Assigned to
All WP leaders must amend and complete the annual report draft
which will be circulated by Lynkeus, providing also the
necessary elements for the management report which includes
the Form C and the justification of resources.
All WP leaders
Publishable executive summary - Each WP leader should provide
10 lines which summarise their WP achievements/setbacks
during the first 12 months of the project.
All WP leaders
Report on the distribution between contractors during the first 12
months of the EC financial contribution
JF
M9.4 stated that the minimum threshold for cases with 20% by
then end of the first 12 months. This must be explained. See
WP12.1
GOSH, IGG and
Necker
The exploitation plan must be re-examined for month 24
(Siemens)
JF
Do not forget the need for independent experts for the ethical
review.
JF, AM
EGF will circulate information about training conferences to HeC
consortium.
EGF
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AZ will discuss proposals for conferences and training activities
with MH
AZ & MH
JF to circulate previously arranged dates for 2007 meetings.
JF
GP and TW will get in touch with the organisers of Genoa science
week and find out what would be possible in 2007 or 2008.
GP/TW
MH to update list of conferences and work on some vital events
that should be attended
MH
TS to send the consortium his conference proposals
TS
All partners are requested to send a chosen mailing list of people
potentially interested in receiving HeC’s newsletter
All HeC partners
TH would like the front page of the web site to be text, so that
search engines find it.
AS
Ppulate with appropriate contents the public part of HeC website by
getting links and .PDF copies of articles written by consortium member
that are related to HeC to go with brief outlines of the WPs and short
texts on HeC major topics of interest extracted from delivered
documents.
TW /WMF
6. Next Meeting
Date:
Agenda:
April16-20 2007
Time:
?
Location:
IGG, Genoa
PMT Meeting
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