The Thoughtful Heart 4.0 project aims to understand, predict and prevent postoperative delirium (POD) and postoperative cognitive dysfunction (POCD) in patients undergoing cardiac surgery by integrating clinical, neurophysiological, biological, cognitive and linguistic data.
By combining expertise from neuroscience, cognitive science, medicine and data science with multimodal measurements such as EEG, fMRI, blood biomarkers and psychological assessments, the researchers investigate how these neurocognitive complications develop and which patients are most at risk.
A key goal of the project is to design and test a personalised, AI-based medical assistant in the form of a mobile chatbot that supports patients primarily in the preoperative period and throughout the perioperative pathway. This assistant provides education, answers questions, collects first-person reports and uses gamification to enhance engagement, while its architecture allows for individualised support based on each patient’s needs and vulnerability profile.
