PATH combines automation technology, experience in proteomic and genomic diagnostics and expertise in the field of clinical informatics, in relation to processes and management of large amounts of biomedical data, to define enabling technologies that allow to substantially redesign the work paths of pathological anatomy laboratories in order to improve their productivity, and the quality of diagnosis and prognosis.
\n
The main aim of the PATH project is to define enabling technologies that allow to substantially redesign the “productive” process of pathological anatomy laboratories. The mechanisms on which it proposes to act concern: the automation of the handling and storage of samples, in order to create chains such as Total Laboratory Automation for the pipelines of analysis; the traceability of samples and the efficient remote access to the results in order to ensure an efficient interface of the laboratory with external hospital facilities.
\n
The various prototypes and the research and development activities related to them will demonstrate in a concrete way the possibility of extending to the field of pathological anatomy the ICT and process automation technologies already widespread and consolidated in other diagnostic sectors, such as laboratory analysis and radiology, despite the substantial differences in the process and the different clinical needs.
\nIn addition to demonstrating the feasibility of this evolution in the field of pathological anatomy, it will be highlighted, through studies and some specific implementations, how this paradigm shift can lay the foundations for the near future of clinical diagnostics, creating the conditions for the creation of an integrated diagnostic laboratory (clinical chemistry\/pathological anatomy) that includes in the diagnostic workflow innovative methods such as genomics and proteomics procedures, with a view to progress towards personalized medicine.
\n
The objectives considered are at the frontier of the state of the art for industrial research: the results of the activities will be specialized in oncology, but they are of general interest and the innovative models of activities in the field of health can be adopted and extended in other clinical contexts, also thanks to the use of open and interoperable technological solutions.
\nThe training project, associated with the PATH research project, aims to train industrial researchers with specific skills in the most innovative aspects of modern digital medicine technologies such as: research and development of innovative systems of robotized management of samples for complex examinations on multiple markers and different diagnostic methods; techniques for integration of digital services for diagnostics with new experimental methods (high-processor sequencing, proteomics, genetic profiling); scalable methodologies of management, transfer, analysis and visualization of large moles of biomedical data.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"gruppo":[123],"class_list":["post-14972","projects","type-projects","status-publish","hentry","gruppo-data-intensive-computing-en"],"acf":{"title":"Pathology in Automated Traceable Healthcare","acronym":"PATH","project_uuid":"c53c36ee-e349-1033-8a7a-0030485a3848","start_date":"01\/11\/2016","end_date":"31\/10\/2022","funder":"MIUR","partners":"\n
| Nome<\/th>\n | Nazione<\/th>\n | Ruolo<\/th>\n <\/tr>\n\n |
|---|---|---|
| Inpeco SpA<\/a><\/td>\n | Italy<\/td>\n | Contractor<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n\n |
| Universit\u00e0\u00a0degli Studi di Sassari<\/a><\/td>\n | Italy<\/td>\n | Partner<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n\n |
| Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche<\/a><\/td>\n | Italy<\/td>\n | Partner<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n<\/table>","proj_website":"","project_status":"Completed","project_coordinator":[{"ID":10226,"post_author":"4","post_date":"2025-06-30 17:23:05","post_date_gmt":"2025-06-30 15:23:05","post_content":"Francesca coordinates the digital health research activities on the Visual and Data-intensive Computing Sector at CRS4 (prev. Research Programs Digital Health\/Healthcare Flows). Her research activity spans the opportunities and problems arising from the application of computer science to medicine, working on interoperability, traceability, telemedicine and modelling of data and processes in the clinical context. In her 20 years of research experience she has cultivated ongoing collaborations with public and private organisations, including research institutions, hospitals and industries operating in the health IT sector, with particular attention to the direct application of research results in clinical practice. She holds a Ph.D. in Innovation Sciences and Technologies from the University of Cagliari and a degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Genoa. Her present research interests are mainly focused on the modelling of biomedical data and processes, with a particular attention to interoperability and traceability, also in the perspective of the application of the FAIR Principles. In particular, she is currently working: on an integration profile about specimen tracking (SET profile), with the IHE PaLM Technical committee; on the modelling of genetic data through the openEHR formalism, with openEHR International; and a standard under development about provenance information in the biotechnology domain (Standard ISO 23494, ISO Technical Committee 276), with BBMRI-ERIC, the European research infrastructure for biobanking.","post_title":"Francesca Frexia","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"francesca-frexia","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2026-04-05 18:11:12","post_modified_gmt":"2026-04-05 16:11:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/www.crs4.it\/people\/francesca-frexia\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"people","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"team_members":[{"ID":9986,"post_author":"4","post_date":"2025-06-30 17:26:23","post_date_gmt":"2025-06-30 15:26:23","post_content":"Graduated in Electronic Engineering at the University of Cagliari in 2003, Alessandro Sulis successively took a II level Master in Information Technology, at the Center of Excellence CEFRIEL in Milan. He has a decade of experience in interoperability between clinical systems according to the main standards and best practices and actively collaborates with international reference organizations (IHE and HL7 International). In particular, since 2013 he has been Monitor at the IHE European Connectathon and since 2021 he has been Co-Chair of the Technical Committee of the IHE PaLM (Pathology and Laboratory Medicine) domain, where he is also the main editor of the SET Profile (Specimen Event Tracking), for sample traceability. His current research interests include the study and promotion of FAIR principles, in the context of projects related to FAIRification of data and metadata in the clinical domain.","post_title":"Alessandro Sulis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"alessandro-sulis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2026-04-05 18:13:59","post_modified_gmt":"2026-04-05 16:13:59","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/www.crs4.it\/people\/alessandro-sulis\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"people","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":10210,"post_author":"4","post_date":"2025-06-30 17:22:45","post_date_gmt":"2025-06-30 15:22:45","post_content":"Giovanni Delussu is a researcher in the \"Digital Health\" area which belongs to the \"Visual and Data-Intensive Computing\" research Program. He holds a Laurea (MSc) degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the \"Politecnico di Torino\" (1993). Afterwards he worked in the Italian Air Force as officer to ground equipment aircraft maintenance. He joined the CRS4 in 1996. He has worked in many different fields: algorithms and codes for mesh generation, sail aerodynamics, boat hydrodynamics, combustion, dynamic structural calculations on artificial heart valves, rocket for Mars exploration (Prof. Rubbia). He worked also in the renewable energy area, specifically on concentrated solar power (CSP) systems. Then he worked on \"Big Data\" problems. Presently he is working on digital healthcare solutions. In 2017 got his PhD in Innovation Sciences and Technologies jointly awarded by University of Cagliari (UNICA), University of Aveiro (UAVR), Portugal, Pushchino State Institute of Life Sciences, (PSILS), Pushchino, Russia and ENIM Ecole Nationale de l'Industrie Minerale, Morocco with a thesis in the field of Biomedical Informatics. Main interests:surfing, tennis","post_title":"Giovanni Delussu","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"giovanni-delussu","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2026-04-05 18:10:54","post_modified_gmt":"2026-04-05 16:10:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/www.crs4.it\/people\/giovanni-delussu\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"people","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":10208,"post_author":"4","post_date":"2025-06-30 17:22:43","post_date_gmt":"2025-06-30 15:22:43","post_content":"Mauro Del Rio received the M.Sc. degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Cagliari in 2005. In 2006 he joined the Digital Media Applications group at CRS4. Here he took part to the development of tools and applications for managing multimedia files. Since 2013 he has been working with the Digital Health group. He deals with Telemedicine and distributed computing of clinical data.","post_title":"Mauro Del Rio","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"mauro-del-rio","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2026-04-05 18:10:52","post_modified_gmt":"2026-04-05 16:10:52","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/www.crs4.it\/people\/mauro-del-rio\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"people","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":10291,"post_author":"4","post_date":"2025-06-30 17:24:26","post_date_gmt":"2025-06-30 15:24:26","post_content":"Since the degree in Computer Science from the Universit\u00e0 degli Studi di Cagliari in 2008, he deals with research and development in the area of Clinical Informatics and Biomedicine. He has worked since 2010 in the Digital Health group at CRS4, where he is involved in design and development of application focused on integration among clinical domains, telemedicine. In particular, in the context of telemedicine, he participated in the creation of a prototype for ultrasound teleconsultation. Regarding interoperability, he collaborated to the implementation of traceability systems for clinical processes, acquiring a deep knowledge of international standards and guidelines of the field, like HL7 and IHE. He is the main developer of HL7apy, an open-source Python package to handle HL7 v2 messages and he participated as Monitor to the IHE Connectathon in 2017, 2018 and 2020. More recently he has focused his work on data FAIRification concerning the sharing of data about rare diseases and the development of the biomedical research registry of the Region of Sardinia.","post_title":"Vittorio Meloni","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"vittorio-meloni","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2026-04-05 18:12:20","post_modified_gmt":"2026-04-05 16:12:20","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/www.crs4.it\/people\/vittorio-meloni\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"people","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":10259,"post_author":"4","post_date":"2025-06-30 17:23:44","post_date_gmt":"2025-06-30 15:23:44","post_content":"After graduating in Computer Science at the University of Cagliari in 2006, he joined the Digital Health group of CRS4, directing his research activity to the application of ICT in the clinical and biomedical fields, mainly in the areas of telemedicine, interoperability between clinical systems and creation of systems for the treatment of large amounts of biomedical data. His current research interests are focused on the management of complex and heterogeneous clinical data with open standard formats (such as openEHR and HL7-FHIR) and on Digital Pathology. In this area in particular, he has designed and implemented the CRS4 Digital Pathology platform to support diagnosis from digitized slides, collaborating with leading clinical institutions such as the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm and the COREP consortium. The platform allows to handle, view and annotate scanned images, and it is the core of several use cases in the context of international research projects, focused on remote training (CyTest), clinical trials (ProMort Study) and Artificial Intelligence models' development from annotated images (DeepHealth).","post_title":"Luca Lianas","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"luca-lianas","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2026-04-05 18:11:43","post_modified_gmt":"2026-04-05 16:11:43","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/www.crs4.it\/people\/luca-lianas\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"people","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":10128,"post_author":"4","post_date":"2025-06-30 17:21:58","post_date_gmt":"2025-06-30 15:21:58","post_content":"I am a Bioinformatician and Software Engineer with extensive experience in research.Since 2011, I have developed strong expertise in managing large-scale genomic and biological data from an NGS Core facility, integrating clinical and experimental data, tracking samples and data provenance, and ensuring the reproducibility and portability of analysis workflows.My skills range from programming to project planning, covering scripting, web services, and databases. I have a strong aptitude for problem-solving and teamwork.I earned my master's degree in Physics at the University of Cagliari in 2004. More recently, I obtained a Ph.D. with a thesis titled \"Analysis of somatic mutations in oncology liquid biopsies: the effectiveness of a data-driven approach.\"Currently, I am a Researcher in Bioinformatics at the Department of Biosciences of CRS4 (Center for Advanced Studies, Research and Development in Sardinia). My work focuses on the integration, traceability, interpretation, and intensive analysis of massive and heterogeneous biological data.As part of the Data Engineer & Computing team, I contributed to the development of CRS4's data-intensive computing infrastructure, which integrates computing and storage resources with the CRS4 Next Generation Sequencing Core. This infrastructure provides traceable automation and seamless management and analysis of sequencing data.","post_title":"Rossano Atzeni","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"rossano-atzeni","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2026-04-05 18:10:05","post_modified_gmt":"2026-04-05 16:10:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/www.crs4.it\/people\/rossano-atzeni\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"people","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":10206,"post_author":"4","post_date":"2025-06-30 17:22:41","post_date_gmt":"2025-06-30 15:22:41","post_content":"Roberto Cusano, responsible of NGS sequencing platform, works at the CRS4 since 2009 where he has specialized inNext Generation Sequencing. After graduating in Biotechnology at the University of Genoa, he worked in various public research centers and hospital institutions in Italy where he acquired vast experience (30 years) in biotechnology applied to research and diagnostics in the fields of molecular biology, rare diseases, oncology and transplantation genetics. Since his early working years he has specialized in techniques for manipulating and analyzing nucleic acids, in particular for genetic mapping and sequencing. The acquired skills are used both in the development of methods applied to diagnostics and research, and in providing scientific support and services to the scientific community. He is the author of 78 publications in international scientific journals subject to editorial control and with an H-index of 35","post_title":"Roberto Cusano","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"roberto-cusano","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2026-04-05 18:10:50","post_modified_gmt":"2026-04-05 16:10:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/www.crs4.it\/people\/roberto-cusano\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"people","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":10285,"post_author":"4","post_date":"2025-06-30 17:24:17","post_date_gmt":"2025-06-30 15:24:17","post_content":"Cecilia Mascia got her master's degree in Biomedical Engineering in 2013 at the Polytechnic of Turin, with a thesis focused on the evaluation of a telemedicine system developed during an internship at the Digital Health group of the CRS4. In 2015 she collaborated with the Department of Mechanical, Chemical and Materials Engineering of the University of Cagliari in a research project on the analysis, modelling and re-engineering of processes related to the drug supply chain in a private hospital. She joined the DH group in 2014, mainly involved in clinical data modelling activities according to international specifications (openEHR, in particular, and HL7 CDA) for EHR interoperability purposes. She is currently working with the BBMRI-ERIC consortium to draft a proposal of a provenance information model for the biotechnology domain (ISO TC 276) and with the OpenEHR consortium for the definition of genomic data models.","post_title":"Cecilia Mascia","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cecilia-mascia","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2026-04-05 18:12:10","post_modified_gmt":"2026-04-05 16:12:10","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/www.crs4.it\/people\/cecilia-mascia\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"people","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}]},"yoast_head":"\n |