by Theodoros Kyprianou, Clinical Professor, Department of Basic and Clinical Sciences, University of Nicosia Medical School.

Introduction by Professor Adonis Ioannides, Interim Dean, University of Nicosia Medical School.

By overwhelming the body’s homeostatic mechanisms (HM), diseases like sepsis, COVID-19, trauma etc., unravel a lethal critical illness spiral in hundreds of thousands of patients, every day, at enormous monetary and societal cost, worldwide. This has been devastatingly revealed to humanity during the SARS-COV-2 pandemic.

Poor understanding of the trajectory of each person’s HM, as well as the pattern of organ involvement during critical illness, has led to generic physiological targeting and guidelines based on randomized experiments, while personalized and precise critical care remains elusive. Analysing features of high granularity data (HGD) from vital signs and organ support systems in the ICU setting, can offer a unique insight, a real-time phenotypic expression that changes in response to / in advance of HM derangement, organ complications, and medical interventions. This new monitoring and decision support toolkit, can be further advanced, using omics-data and bioinformatics, however, it requires developing a whole new set-up to acquire, store and process HGD and omics-data, as well as a new pathophysiology terminology encompassing terms like entropy and cross-organ talk. Advancements in Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial / Augmented Intelligence (AI) give us new tools in approaching the complexity of the phenomena in critical illness, if applied using trustworthy methodology.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Professor Theodoros Kyprianou is a senior clinician, researcher and educator in the fields of Respiratory and Intensive Care Medicine. He is currently serving as Professor of Medicine at the University of Nicosia Medical School and as a consultant physician at Princess Royal University Hospital, King’s College NHS Trust in London, He has been the founding Head of the Department of Intensive Care at the Nicosia General Hospital for more than a decade (2006-2018.)

He was part of the inaugural team of physicians and scientists to establish the first Medical School in Cyprus at the University of Nicosia. As senior lecturer (2010, dual appointment in both institutions) he contributed to setting up and led the clinical skills lab and subsequently the Critical Care, Anesthesia & Emergency Medicine clinical training. He has also co-founded and led the MSc in Health Informatics and Telemedicine @ the Open University of Cyprus until 2019.

He has held leadership positions at the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine as National Coordinator for the development of the European curriculum for training in Intensive Care Medicine; Chair of Technology Assessment & Health Informatics Working Group (until 2018); and Deputy Chair of the e-Learning Committee (until 2019). He has also been a member of the Flagship EU Research H2020 (SC1) programme standing committee in Brussels (2012 – 2020) and served as member/chair of ad-hoc review panels for the EU COST programme (last in Feb 2022). He is also a reviewer / review editor in prestigious scientific journals in the field of Biomedical and Health Informatics.

Prof Kyprianou has served as the principal investigator / coordinator in several research programmes, both national and EU funded, raising more than 3.500.000 euros for the hosting Institutions. He has published and presented a number of scientific articles & abstracts in the fields of ICU bio-signals and data management, intensive care education & training, and critical illness pathophysiology. He has given over 60 invited lectures in International Congresses in more than 10 countries over the last 10 years. He serves on the board of ideation.AI, a start-up developing health analytics solutions (co-founder – Medical Director) and has served on the boards of NGOs – Intensive Care Forum (founding Deputy Chair), International Humanitarian Aid and MAZI foundation.