Today, the SIMCor consortium has concluded its two-day kick-off e-meeting (14-15 January 2021), which allowed all its partners to have an overview of project rationale, mission, strategic objectives and workplan, governance structure and procedures, as well as preliminarily discuss objectives, M1-M12 milestones, deliverables and action items for each work package.

In order to fulfil its Y1 milestones, the consortium has envisaged the creation of 5 working groups (WGs):

1. a data management & ethics WG (DME-WG), to address project data collection, processing and storage and relevant ethical, legal and regulathory issues, including the ethical review (Milestone 1);
2. a system requirement elicitation WG (SR-WG), dedicated to the gathering of technical and privacy requirements for the implementation of a provisory data repository and ultimately the project virtual research evironment (Milestone 2);
3. a virtual cohort WG (VC-WG), for the definition of specifics for virtual cohort generation;
4. a virtual implantation/WP8 WG for the refinement of existing device models (Milestones 3-4) and definition of simplified vessel models for virtual implantation;
5. a SOP and regulatory issues WG (RI-WG) that will be responsible for the definition of a common structure for SOP documents and formulation of guidelines and best practices for each aspect of in-silico device development, verification and validation, and regulatory approval.

A first press release announcing project inception was produced and circulated, also leveraging consortium partners’ press offices support.

Besides WG meetings, the next consortium e-meeting (M6 consortium meeting) will take place on 14-15 June 2021, to discuss M1-M6 advancements and results, as well as plan activities and action items towards objectives and milestones for M12.