The first Review Meeting of the Low Back and Neck Pain in-silico modelling project, Back-UP, took place on 10 July, 2019, at the EuroForum EC facilities in Luxembourg.

The Project Officer Violeta Peréz-Nueno and the team of reviewers had the chance to meet with the Back-UP consortium for a valuable exchange of ideas on the project’s direction. Coordinator Helios De Rosario (IBV) set the event in motion by showcasing the project’s ambition and the work carried out so far. This was followed by in-depth presentations by each of the Work Package leaders, including highlights of the Professional and Researcher platforms in development.

In Back-UP, empirica is leading the Work Package on innovation management and impact assessment. Dr. Rainer Thiel and Malte von Tottleben presented what has been accomplished so far. The presentation focused on the one hand on the method employed by empirica to identify and analyse innovations and exploitable assets resulting from the project, with a view to developing commercialisation plans. On the other hand, empirica showcased the steps taken to develop a use case and scenario-based cost-benefit analysis and an impact analysis of Back-UP clinical care pathways.

The Back-UP partners received both praise and guidance from the reviewers’ and are now awaiting the official report. The concept and use cases of the Back-UP platform will next be presented in a poster presentation at the 11th Congress of the European Pain Federation EFIC in Valencia. The next consortium meeting will be hosted by empirica in November, 2019, in Bonn, Germany.