CardioScape – a survey of the European cardiovascular research landscape and recommendations for future transnational research strategy.
Cardiovascular diseases is the world’s leading cause of death, responsible for the death of over 4.4 million people each year, and 45% of all deaths across the ESC member countries. Furthermore, recent data show that the burden of cardiovascular disease is increasing worldwide [1].
To address this imbalance, the European Society of Cardiology – representing over 80 000 cardiology professionals across Europe and the Mediterranean – in collaboration with Charité, Universitätsmedizin Berlin – surveyed the European research landscape with the projects CardioScape I and II.
CardioScape I – a 23 months EU funded project aimed at carrying out a survey of the European CVD research landscape – was successfully completed in 2014. The outcomes are available as well in a publication in the European Heart Journal.
Following the project’s success and its strategic impact, CardioScape II has been funded by ERA-CVD, a European Research Area Network (ERA-Net) comprising 24 partners from 19 countries/regions that has been granted for funding through the current EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation ‘Horizon 2020’.
CardioScape II aims to establish a reliable, comprehensive and continuously up-to-date online database of CVD funding throughout Europe useful for researchers, scientific organisations and funding agencies. It should guide the future of CVD research in Europe, and encourage synergies and cooperation, reduce duplication of efforts and identify gaps and priorities that need attention from funding organisations.
The results of the project need to be disseminated as widely as possible, because highly valuable to different stakeholders: funding agencies, academic researchers, policy makers and governmental funding bodies.
[1] Global Burden of Disease Collaborative Network. Global Burden of Disease Study 2017 (GBD 2017) Results. Seattle, United States: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), 2018. Available from http://ghdx.healthdata.org/gbd-results-tool