Pollar: A success led by Bull-Atos, EIT Health France Partner

The impact of air POLLution on Asthma and Rhinitis

The Pollar project won EIT Health’s Call for Innovation by Design 2017. EIT Health is supporting this project to promote healthy living and healthcare systems, and to understand the effects of pollution on sleep, work, and asthma.

We all are exposed to air pollution in our everyday life. Interactions between air pollution, sleep and allergic diseases are known but only partly understood due to insufficient technologies. Moreover, 100 million citizens in the EU are affected by an allergic rhinitis and/or asthma causing an impaired sleep and impact on daily activity. It is in this context that the Pollar Project has been created and awarded as a Laureate of the Innovation by Design call of EIT Health: the goal aimed at defining the links between pollution, pollens, and respiratory diseases that are impacting the lives of the patients from every part of the world.

The origin of the project begins with: Kyomed, a contract-service provider specialized in the field of connected health devices as well as biological and digital markers, a member of the Forum Living Lab Santé Autonomie (LLSA, that is an EIT Health France partner), and Prof. Bousquet who has brought his scientific and medical support, and his large network. Data are collected by a mobile application that enables the follow-up of the patients affected by allergic rhinitis and asthma. This application is being developed to answer the solicitation of Health Authorities and to bring a solution to the patients.

Currently, there are 17 000 users that are spread in 23 countries. The team of the ambitious Pollar Project wants to accelerate the development and the delivery of an ICT solution for a larger range of the population. The aim is to reach 100 000 users to gather maximum information and to present it in more countries.

The Pollar project won the 2017 Call for Innovation by Design of EIT Health, thus, they will receive €2 million for two years. Winning the EIT Health challenge also offers the possibility to work with the most adapted partners and the best experts. Moreover, being part of the EIT Health ecosystem is highlighting the results they will receive and thus help the application spread and gain recognition.

The winning consortium of the Pollar Project is gathering innovative SMEs, industrial entrepreneurs, and academic research institutes. Bull Atos, a French Core Partner, is leading this project. Sorbonne Université and Université Grenoble Alpes, also French Core Partners, and ISGlobal (one of the leading research labs in Europe from the University of Barcelona) are also taking part in this project since they have specialised units on pollution, allergies, and sleep. Aquas Catalan Agency for the environment is bringing its expertise in pollution regulation. Forum LLSA (French Network Partner, specialised in Living Labs education and training) and one of the members of its network (CEN-STIMCO) are also involved in this project, alongside the start-ups Kyomed and Neogia. Neogia has a recognised know-how in artificial intelligence, big data, and data science, namely in the field of healthcare and environment.

Gathering their expertise, the members of the Pollar Project aim at combining emerging technologies with machine learning to:

• Understand the effects of air pollution on allergic rhinitis and its impact on sleep, work, asthma
• Assess societal consequences, share with citizens, corporate citizens, and (health care) professionals
• Propose alert systems and preventive strategies
• Develop participative policies

For 2018, the goal is to furnish a retrospective study on the impact of the pollution and the pollens on the symptoms of the disease and the medication consumption, but also to find a way to collect and diffuse data in real-time. They already got the support of the World Health Organisation and they will present their project in New York at the United Nations in September 2018.

Then, in 2019, the goal will be to furnish a prospective study and to integrate and analyse all of the heterogeneous data (environmental and health data) collected all around Europe in this project in order to be able to make prevention at global and individual scales.

For any further enquiries contact:

Albane Pariset, albane.pariset@eithealth.eu