European Union grants 6 million euros towards endometriosis research

The European Union is supporting a major international research and innovation project that aims to improve the treatment and quality of life of those with endometriosis: Finding Endometriosis Using Machine Learning (FEMaLe)

The euro 6 million grant has been awarded from the Horizon 2020 pool to the four-year FEMaLE project, which focuses entirely on improving diagnosis, prevention, and care in endometriosis.

The project is lead by Aarhus University, and is spearheaded by geneticist Mette Nyegaard (department of biomedicine), epidemiologist Dorte Rytter (department of public health), as well as psychologist Karina Ejgaard Hansen and professor Axel Forman (department of clinical medicine), along with another 15 collaborators across Europe*.

Endometriosis.org is delighted to be a collaborator and a contributor to this initiative.

The challenges in endometriosis

We are all familiar with the challenges in endometriosis:

diagnostic delay
under diagnosed / mis-diagnosed
hit and miss treatments, including lack of access to skilled surgical care
impaired fertility, and
severely compromised quality of life and consequent socio economic burden for those affected.

The FEMaLe project sets out to address these challenges by examining how the prevention of endometriosis can be improved together with earlier diagnosis and support for self-care.

FEMaLe – progressing understanding of endometriosis

The FEMaLe project will build bridges across disciplines and sectors to translate genetic and epidemiological knowledge into clinical tools that support decision-making in terms of diagnosis and care aimed at both general practice and highly specialised endometriosis clinics – all via machine learning and artificial intelligence.

The scientific coordinator of FEMaLe, Mette Nyegaard, explains:

Associate professor, Mette Nyegaard
Aarhus University

Improving diagnosis and prevention, whilst supporting self-care, will be done by identifying the biological subtypes of endometriosis through the introduction of digital tools for detection, and by supporting the dialogue on treatment options between the patients and health care professionals – a dialogue that is currently characterised too often by taboos and by those affected by debilitating symptoms not having their voices heard.

We hope that this project can introduce a viable path for the use of precision medicine and shared data with citizens, and that it will act as a driver for new discoveries in endometriosis research.

Success in this area should both reduce the personal and societal burden in terms of compromised quality of life and work productivity for those affected by endometriosis.

We just want to prevent endometriosis in the next generation of women!