We are inviting you to a workshop: New solutions to improve the diagnosis and monitoring of osteoarthritis
Millions of people worldwide are suffering from osteoarthritis* and more than a fourth of the population above the age of 40 are affected. Osteoarthritis is a joint disease that results from breakdown of cartilage and underlying bone and causes pain and difficulty to move. Most commonly the large joints, such as the hips and knees, are affected and the symptoms usually progress slowly over years.
The Västra Götaland region as the main healthcare provider in Västra Götaland has identified several challenges within the osteoarthritis care and would like to address them by inviting researchers outside the traditional medical field to provide new solutions. One of the challenges is the ability to give a clear diagnosis at an early stage of the disease and another is to monitor its progress.
Experience tells us that cross disciplinary research can generate unexpected, and revolutionary, solutions to challenges within healthcare. As an example, novel use of image analysis originating from mechanical engineering can be used to support knee injury diagnosis. The recent explosion of AI and machine learning technologies have also found a vast number of uses in clinical practice.
We would like to invite researchers within science and technology who don’t normally address the health and medical area to provide cross discipline inputs. We believe you might host the knowledge and ideas that will enable an early and clear diagnosis of osteoarthritis or help monitoring the progress of the disease.
During the workshop, orthopaedics will explain briefly what osteoarthritis is and then a physiotherapist, a radiologist and a researcher working with biomarkers will give their perspective on diagnosis and monitoring and define the challenges that they are facing today. With this information as a foundation, we will then put you in smaller groups to discuss possible solutions.
We strongly believe, that by sharing our challenges, we will gain interest, create new insights and take the first steps towards future research collaborations across different disciplines.
When: March 5th 1 pm-3pm
Where: Online workshop
Please sign up at Regionkalendern, no later than February 28th.
This workshop is part of the larger project VGR som Innovationsmotor, and more specifically about the challenges we have identified. Please observe, for this workshop we won’t address all challenges and you don’t need to provide any material beforehand.
* osteoarthritis: artros in swedish