The project aims at creating an EU-Africa e-Infrastructure, UBORA, for open source co-design of new solutions to face the current and future healthcare challenges of both continents, by exploiting networking, knowledge on rapid prototyping of new ideas and sharing of safety criteria and performance data. The e-Infrastructure will foster advances in education and the development of innovative solutions in Biomedical Engineering (BME), both of which are flywheels for European and African economies.

Personal health systems for the management of chronic diseases have seen giant leaps in development over recent years. These systems offer vital sign monitoring and therapy delivery at home, focusing on the primary physical disease conditions. However, they do not provide support for early mood assessment or psychological treatment and lack a real-time comprehensive assessment of the patient’s mental status.

The aim of DATABRAIN is to elucidate and hardprint the 3D  microarchitecture of the neurons in their native environment using high resolution imaging techniques. Our long term goal is to understand the significance and microstructural basis of sexual dimorphism  in autism and other brain disorders integrating biomedical engineering  knowledge. The project is funded by the University of Pisa (PRA2016), housed at the Department of Information Engineering and, given its multidisciplinary nature, implemented at this research center.