The Tera Cluster continues to advance to take advantage of all the business opportunities that exist in the region around the technological exploitation of the healthcare field. After the constitution of the Digital Health Commission in September 2024 and the recent signing of a collaboration agreement with the Valdecilla Health Research Institute (IDIVAL), it now launches [Tera]pias. A dissemination initiative that will strengthen the connection of ICT companies with the health sector and in which different aspects of relevance to the progress of precision medicine and the most efficient health strategies for the region will be presented.
This proposal, executed in collaboration with the magazine Cantabria Económica, contemplates a series of public events in which different aspects of relevance for the development of technological innovation solutions linked to health and healthy aging will be highlighted. The first session of this cycle will be held next Friday, January 19, at the renovated Santander headquarters, located on Hernán Cortés Street.
Marcos López Hoyos, scientific director of IDIVAL and head of the Immunology service at the Marqués de Valdecilla University Hospital, and Javier Crespo, head of the Digestive service at the same hospital, will explain how ICT companies in the region can collaborate with Cohorte Cantabria . An absolutely unique project, whose main purpose is to take blood samples and health and socio-demographic information from 50,000 people.
These field works involve very expensive follow-ups and are rarely done because the sample sizes needed usually require large financial and time resources. In return, they offer results of great scientific solidity, since the possibility of them being biased is less than in other types of studies.
The most famous cohort in the world, formed in Massachusetts, began in 1948 and is in its third generation of participants. It has involved 9,000 people to date. Cantabria Cohort plans to quintuple that size to generate the largest field research in the world that has been carried out in the medical field. In this sense, the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques on the enormous volume of information will generate a library of structured data that will constitute an important strategic capital for health research and innovation in Cantabria over the coming decades.
The event, which already has full capacity, will be the first in a series that will initially take place quarterly.