The ERIS project will address the critical need for standardised, high-quality training in cardiac electrophysiology (EP) across Europe. The project will tackle the fragmented and inconsistent training landscape that limits healthcare professionals' ability to adopt new technologies efficiently, particularly in underserved regions. With the growing prevalence of cardiac arrhythmias, such as atrial fibrillation and ventricular arrhythmias, due to an ageing population, it is vital that electrophysiologists receive thorough and cohesive training. The ERIS project proposes to create a collaborative, Europe-wide educational hub involving academia, university hospitals, scientific societies, and industry partners. By integrating theory, simulation, and practical training, this initiative ensures that healthcare professionals are well-equipped to provide innovative interventional treatments for cardiac conditions. One of the main challenges is the reliance on industry-led training courses, which, while beneficial, often lack full academic commitment, integration of the three training steps, and accessibility across different regions. Additionally, these courses can also present conflicts of interest. The ERIS project seeks to overcome these barriers by developing academic-driven training programmes that offer certification and ensure the quality, consistency, and independence of the education provided. This novel training platform will be designed with long-term sustainability in mind, creating a network of facilities across Europe. The first phase will focus on EP training, and the model will be expanded to cover other medical specialties in the future. Through this initiative, ERIS aims to reduce healthcare disparities, improve patient outcomes, and ensure that healthcare professionals are continuously trained in the latest innovations in order to provide these advancements to the EU patients.

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common cardiac arrhythmia, with a prevalence of 1.5-2% in European populations. By being a major cause of stroke, dementia, heart failure, and premature death, AF is a major threat to healthy ageing. Despite increasing knowledge on the diverse mechanisms that cause the AF substrate in individual patients, current strategies for prevention and therapy of AF remain largely unguided by mechanistic insights. As a result - with the exception of anticoagulation for the prevention of AF-related stroke – treatment of AF has thus far failed to improve patients’ outcome. The CATCH ME consortium will bridge the present disconnect between our understanding of the molecular and electrophysiological mechanisms of AF and the current unstructured approach to its prevention and treatment. The consortium combines clinical, molecular, ECG engineering, and biostatistical expertise, and has access to large sets of human biological material (atrial tissue and bloods samples) and carefully phenotyped patient populations. Together, we will identify and integrate the main drivers of prevalent and incident AF in patients, and validate new ECG- and blood based markers in well-characterized cohorts. The results of these investigations will provide a quantitative estimate of the prevalence and impact of new and established risk factors for AF in Europe and uncover potential new targets and strategies for the prevention and treatment of this arrhythmia. We will integrate these factors into a new clinical classification of AF that will be externally validated in two large patient cohorts, including response to current treatment strategies, and AF-related complications. In summary, CATCH ME will 1. identify major AF-related modifiers of health in the elderly in Europe, 2. develop clinical tools that have the potential of transforming the management of AF in individual patients, and 3. inform future personalized strategies to prevent and treat AF in Europe.

More than 50% of the newly diagnosed breast cancer patients are elderly and particularly susceptible to cardiotoxicity of cancer treatment due to age-related factors and prevalence of multiple co-morbidities. The cumulative effect of risk factors in the elderly patient resembles a “snowball effect”, where baseline age and cancer-related changes are exacerbated by direct therapy-induced cardiotoxicity, resulting to a multi-morbid state and mortality. Frailty and high risk of cardiotoxicity in this group may lead to inappropriate interventions and undertreatment, resulting in poorer outcomes, deterioration of QoL and increased healthcare costs. Considering, that older cancer patients are underrepresented in trials, new interdisciplinary and patient-oriented studies able to provide clinical guidelines and best practices for delivering quality care are needed. CARDIOCARE will contribute to scale up a better management for the multimorbid elderly breast cancer patients. Innovative eHealth applications, coupled with sensors and wearables, will permit a consistent evaluation of the intrinsic capacity and by combining clinical and biological features, will provide a holistic approach to the management of cancer and his co-morbidities in the elderly population. This will allow the development of quality indicators for effective care pathways and allow a more informed approach to breast cancer patients with multimorbidity, training and education of caregivers and stakeholders to boost effectively elderly breast cancer patients along disease trajectory and cardiotoxicity. eHealth applications will increase the involvement and participation of the patients in their care process and self-management improving adherence to their individualized care plan, and a better psychological adaptation to their disease. Overall, the implementation of a comprehensive model for effective risk stratification will positively impact on QoL, adverse events, hospitalizations, and healthcare.