PROVINCIA LOMBARDO VENETA - ORDINEOSPEDALIERO DI SAN GIOVANNI DI DIO- FATEBENEFRATELLI

Their core work

The IRCCS Fatebenefratelli in Brescia is a clinical research hospital specializing in neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders, including Alzheimer's disease, bipolar disorder, depression, and epilepsy. They combine clinical patient data with advanced biomarker research, digital monitoring technologies, and data-driven disease progression modeling. Their work bridges the gap between neuropsychiatric clinical care and translational research, contributing patient cohorts, neurophysiological expertise, and real-world clinical validation to European consortia studying brain disorders and mental health.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Their early H2020 work (2015-2017) centered on foundational neuroscience — electrophysiological biomarkers for Alzheimer's (NIBSAD) and computational models of neurological disease progression (EuroPOND), alongside e-infrastructure participation (EGI-Engage). From 2016 onward, they shifted decisively toward digital psychiatry and remote monitoring, with RADAR-CNS introducing wearable and smartphone-based assessment for depression and epilepsy. Their most recent projects (R-LiNK, EarlyCause) show a further evolution toward precision psychiatry — personalized treatment response prediction and mechanistic understanding of how early-life stress drives later mental and physical disease.

They are moving from observational neuroscience toward technology-enabled, personalized psychiatric care — expect future work in AI-driven treatment selection and digital biomarkers for mental health.

How they like to work

Fatebenefratelli operates predominantly as a consortium partner (5 of 6 projects), contributing clinical expertise and patient cohorts rather than leading project management. With 122 unique partners across 27 countries, they integrate into large, diverse European consortia — typical of clinical research sites that provide essential real-world data. They coordinated one Marie Curie fellowship (NIBSAD), suggesting capacity for focused research leadership, but their strength lies in being a trusted clinical node within multi-center studies.

They have collaborated with 122 unique partners across 27 countries, indicating deep integration into pan-European health research networks. Their partnerships span academic hospitals, universities, and technology developers across most EU member states.

What sets them apart

As an IRCCS (Italian government-recognized clinical research hospital), Fatebenefratelli combines direct patient access with a research mandate — they can recruit clinical cohorts and generate real-world evidence that pure universities or tech companies cannot. Their dual expertise in traditional neurophysiology and modern digital health tools (wearables, smartphones, speech analysis) makes them a rare bridge between classic clinical neuroscience and digital psychiatry. For consortium builders, they offer something hard to find: a clinical partner that understands both the biology and the technology side of mental health monitoring.

Highlights from their portfolio

• RADAR-CNS
  Large-scale IMI-style project using wearable devices and smartphones to remotely monitor depression, epilepsy, and multiple sclerosis — positioned at the intersection of digital health and neurology.
• R-LiNK
  Their largest single grant (EUR 465,595), focused on predicting individual lithium response in bipolar disorder — a precision psychiatry challenge with direct clinical impact.
• EarlyCause
  Ambitious multi-disciplinary project linking early-life stress to later psycho-cardio-metabolic disease through epigenetics and microbiome research — their most recent and mechanistically complex involvement.