On 20 November 2024, the 6th Panhellenic Conference on Clinical Studies & Research was successfully held at the Caravel Hotel in Athens, under the theme “Clinical Studies and the Pharmaceutical Industry in the Era of Artificial Intelligence.” During the conference, the activities and initiatives of the Health Hub were presented. The opening of the conference was delivered by Dr. Antonios Avgerinos, President of the Hellenic Red Cross, while welcoming addresses were given, among others, by the Minister of Health, Mr. Adonis Georgiadis, and the President of SAFEE, Mr. Dimitris Giannakopoulos. As part of the conference program, a roundtable discussion was held with the participation of representatives from the European Digital Innovation Hub – Health Hub, highlighting its role in supporting innovation and digital transformation in clinical research and the pharmaceutical sector.
The first presentation on behalf of the Health Hub was delivered by Professor of Pharmaceutical Nanotechnology Mr. Konstantinos Demetzos from the Department of Pharmacy of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA), together with Ms. Maria Pournari, Head of International Development at the JOIST Innovation Park and COO of the Health Hub. Professor Demetzos’s presentation focused on the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Nanotechnology in the development of innovative therapeutic products, analyzing the application of technologies such as CRISPR-Cas9, organs-on-a-chip, immunotherapy, and the use of real-world data in clinical trials. Examples were presented, including Patisiran, which targets genetic mutations, and AlphaFold, which facilitates the prediction of protein structures, accelerating pharmaceutical research. The stages of research for the discovery of new drugs using AI were also described, along with the economic and time efficiencies achieved through its use.
In her speech, Ms. Pournari highlighted the importance of European Digital Innovation Hubs, which support digital transformation in the health and pharmaceutical sectors. She emphasized that the Health Hub offers services such as digital maturity assessment, virtual clinical trials, and personalized medical solutions. At the same time, it supports skills development through webinars, specialized training programs, hackathons, and AR/VR laboratories. The Health Hub also facilitates networking through innovation mapping and provides comprehensive guidance for attracting investors and gaining access to new markets.
This was followed by a presentation by Associate Professor Mr. Evangelos Karalis (Department of Pharmacy, NKUA), who addressed computational clinical studies using both classical modeling and simulation methods as well as more recent approaches based on artificial intelligence. Three examples of computational clinical studies from his laboratory were presented. The first focused on the development of software to predict the outcome of a bioequivalence study based solely on in vitro dissolution data. The second example presented a new approach proposed by his laboratory for the generation of virtual volunteers using generative artificial intelligence algorithms, while the third example referred to a very recent concept involving vector analysis of measured clinical endpoints, aiming to reduce variability and enable the use of smaller sample sizes in clinical studies.
