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Exploring Frailty and Multimorbidity: Advancing Healthcare for Middle-Aged Populations in Montenegro

At the Department of Medical Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Montenegro, groundbreaking research is being conducted to address a growing health challenge: frailty and its connection to multimorbidity in middle-aged individuals. While traditionally associated with older adults, frailty is increasingly recognized as a critical issue for younger age groups, with significant implications for healthcare systems.

Exploring Frailty and Multimorbidity: Advancing Healthcare for Middle-Aged Populations in Montenegro

🔍 Why This Research Matters:

Frailty and multimorbidity are major contributors to increased mortality rates and healthcare utilization, creating a substantial burden on individuals and health systems alike. By examining these issues in a middle-aged Montenegrin population, this research aims to fill a critical knowledge gap and pave the way for more proactive healthcare approaches.

🎯 Main Goals of the Study:

  • Understand Frailty Prevalence: Investigate how frailty impacts middle-aged individuals and its relationship with chronic and infectious diseases.
  • Enhance Healthcare Strategies: Explore patterns in healthcare utilization to better address the dual challenges of frailty and multimorbidity.
  • Strengthen Health Systems: Provide actionable insights to support early identification and timely interventions for at-risk individuals, particularly in low- and middle-income settings.

This research emphasizes the urgent need to integrate frailty and multimorbidity assessments into primary healthcare, enabling tailored interventions that improve health outcomes for vulnerable populations. By focusing on preventive care and system strengthening, we can work toward reducing the burden of chronic diseases and enhancing the resilience of healthcare systems.

🌍 Building a Healthier Future:

The AI-AGE team is committed to advancing medical research that addresses pressing public health challenges. Together, we aim to create a more sustainable and equitable healthcare system for all.

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Celebrating the Conclusion of the RECOGNISED Project: A Milestone in Diabetes and Dementia Research

After four impactful years of collaboration, the RECOGNISED project, funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme, has successfully reached its conclusion. This initiative brought together 21 partners from nine countries, including academic institutions, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), patient advocacy groups, and international research infrastructures like EATRIS, showcasing the power of multidisciplinary collaboration. Learn more about RECOGNISED project at [link]

Collaborating institutions in RECOGNISED project

Key Achievements:

🔬 Innovative Research: The project explored the use of the retina as a “window to the brain,” focusing on how retinal changes can serve as biomarkers for cognitive decline and dementia in individuals with type 2 diabetes.

💡 Groundbreaking Findings: Researchers conducted experimental and clinical studies, uncovering common molecular mechanisms between diabetic retinopathy and Alzheimer’s disease.

🌍 Global Collaboration: With partners from across Europe, including Montenegro, Spain, Italy, the UK, and the Netherlands, the project fostered a diverse network of experts in diabetes, ophthalmology, and neurology.

The insights gained through RECOGNISED have opened new avenues for early detection and treatment strategies, improving the quality of life for people with type 2 diabetes at risk of cognitive decline.

We extend our gratitude to all the partners and researchers for their dedication and to the European Union for their support through Horizon 2020.

Together, we are advancing the future of healthcare. 💙

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AI-AGE project and progress presentation

On 27 December, University of Donja Gorica hosted a discussion on active project results and progress. Mr Dejan Babic, a young researcher on AI-AGE project gave a presentation on the project and current results.

Mr Dejan Babic gage a presentation on the AI-AGE project
It was a good opportunity to exchange experiances and explore possibilities for collaboration
Dejan went over the current status of the project and plans for the next year
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HPC/AI Workshop and Student Conference

The University of Donja Gorica hosted the highly anticipated HPC/AI Workshop and Student Conference on Saturday, December 21st. This event served as a key platform to highlight the outcomes of the HPC4S3ME IPA project and the AIFusion training program supported by the Innovation Fund of Montenegro. Both projects were developed within the framework of EuroCC2/EuroCC4SEE, with support from the NCC Montenegro team. The events showcased significant advancements in high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) in Montenegro.

AI-AGE team members took part in mentoring students throughout the preparetion for the conference. The conference resulted in a Book of abstracts published on 30 December 2024. Read more at: link.

HPC/AI Workshop and Student Conference took place on 21 December 2024 at the UDG
Over 50 attendees at the conference, mainly students and young researchers
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Exciting Collaboration Alert: Advancing AI and Retinal Imaging Research!

We are thrilled to announce a new collaboration with the Faculty for Information Systems and Technologies at the University of Donja Gorica (UDG), Podgorica. This partnership opens the doors for selected researchers from UDG to access UK Biobank data, enabling them to bring their expertise in data analysis and artificial intelligence to the forefront of cutting-edge medical research. Learn more at [link]

New Collaboration Unlocks the Power of AI and Retinal Imaging to Advance Research on Dementia and Cancer

🔍 What’s the Goal?
The primary objective of this collaboration is to develop an innovative algorithm that compares microvascular complexity across three groups:

  • Individuals with colorectal carcinoma
  • Those with Alzheimer’s disease
  • A control group of healthy individuals

✨ Why It Matters:
This partnership exemplifies the transformative potential of combining retinal imaging with AI-powered analysis. Together, we are uncovering critical links between diseases and pushing the boundaries of early detection and treatment strategies for complex conditions like dementia and cancer.

🌍 A Global Effort:
By merging international resources, state-of-the-art technology, and interdisciplinary expertise, we are taking bold steps toward improving healthcare outcomes for patients worldwide.

💡 Together, we are shaping the future of personalized medicine and driving innovation in healthcare. Stay tuned for updates on this exciting journey!

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Advancing Medical Research with UK Biobank and Retinal Biomarkers

The UK Biobank is a world-renowned resource, housing comprehensive health and genetic data from over 500,000 participants. This invaluable platform is revolutionizing medical research by providing researchers access to detailed medical, lifestyle, and imaging data, driving breakthroughs in understanding and treating diseases like cancer, dementia, and other chronic illnesses.

Advancing Medical Research with UK Biobank

🌟 Key Project Highlight:
One of the pivotal research initiatives, “Exploring the Link Between Dementia and Cancer: Retinal Biomarkers as Predictors of Colon Cancer and Dementia”, is uncovering how retinal biomarkers can serve as early predictors for both colorectal carcinoma and Alzheimer’s disease. By analyzing microvascular complexity in retinal fundus images, this project seeks to identify patterns that could enhance early diagnosis and patient care. Learn more at [link]

✨ Inspired by the RECOGNISED Project:
This initiative builds on insights from the EU-funded RECOGNISED project, which explores the connection between retinal health, cognitive dysfunction, and the risk of dementia in individuals with type 2 diabetes. RECOGNISED has demonstrated the immense potential of retinal imaging as a tool to understand and address chronic diseases. More on RECOGNISED project at [link]

Together, these projects exemplify how innovative approaches and global collaboration can transform healthcare by addressing pressing challenges and improving early detection strategies.

💡 Retinal biomarkers are unlocking new possibilities in personalized medicine and preventive care—advancing our fight against complex diseases.

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In-house HPC infrastructure update

As planned, our project AI-AGE is advancing high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure to support AI-driven research on biomarkers of aging in medical applications. This initiative will empower our team with cutting-edge resources, allowing us to enhance our capacity for data analysis and predictive modeling. To meet the demands of sophisticated AI computations, with the support of AI-AGE, we are upgrading our existing HPC setup with a powerful computing node. This new addition includes a rack computing node equipped with a 48 CPU cores with 128GB RAM, NVIDIA L40 48GB GPUs, and 2x480GB internal SSDs. In addition, the project supported NAS storage of 24TB (multiple disks with RAID) dedicated for dataset management. This infrastructure enhancement is designed to integrate smoothly with our existing equipment, augmenting both our computational and storage capabilities while providing significant value for our investment.

New computing infrastructure supported by the AI-AGE project as planned

AI-AGE project, supported by the Ministry of education, science and innovation, is implemendet through collaboration between Faculty for information systems and technologies at Uiversity of Donja Gorica, and Faculty of medicine at University of Montenegro. The in-house HPC infrastructure is a result of cross-project collaboration with HPC4S3ME project (IPA programme) and both of these project are done with the support from EUROCC NCC Montenegro. The main goal for the in-house lab is for researchers to gain a hands on experience with physical equipment a their disposal, while for larger computing tasks, we will apply for computing time on some of the EU supercomputers.

The equipment upgrade include a Computing node and NAS storage for data menagement
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Research Topic Proposal Defense for the Doctoral Dissertation

The public defense of the Research Topic Proposal for the Doctoral Dissertation by candidate Dr. Isidora Rubežić Lukić, titled “Methods for Assessing Biological Age and Their Correlation with Morbidity and Frailty Syndrome,” took place on September 24, 2024, at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Montenegro, before a committee consisting of:

  • Prof. dr Aneta Bošković – Full Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Montenegro, Chair
  • Prof. dr Antoaneta Adžić Zečević – Full Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Montenegro, Member
  • Prof. dr Nataša Popović, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Montenegro, Mentor and Member

After the candidate’s presentation, the committee members provided comments and suggestions important for the continuation of her dissertation work and posed questions that the candidate successfully answered. After all comments and suggestions were adequately addressed, the committee unanimously decided that the candidate had successfully defended her doctoral dissertation topic.

Dr. Isidora Rubežić Lukić successfuly defended her research topic proposal for her PhD thesis
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Initial recruitment of patients for the AI-Age project is completed

The initial recruitment of the patinets for the AI-Age project is finalized. It was conducted in the primary health care clinics of the Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro. We aim to compare the populations of Great Britain and Montenegro in terms of multimorbidity and frailty status, taking into account differences in economic status and life expectancy (80.7 years in the UK, 76.3 in Montenegro).

The recruitment of the patient for the projects completed.
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Awakening the vision at UDG: lectures and workshops for new students

AI-AGE team participated in presenations during the implementation of the “Awakening the vision at UDG 2024”. We gave several presentations and workshops relevant to the AI and need to understend and adopt the AI in everyday’s life and workflow. Please check out the video about the event that engaged about 1000 new students enrolled in the first year of studies at UDG.

Awakening the Vision at UDG
Several AI related workshops offered to around 1000 new students at UDG
Participation in lectures and discussions on AI in everyday’s life and workflow
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