Deniss Karai

Around 13% of the adult population suffers some form of kidney damage, and the death rate of complications related to chronic kidney disease (CKD) is very high. The primary cause of death in CKD patients is cardiovascular disease. Vascular calcification (VC), one of the cardiovascular complications, is prevailing in CKD. One of the causes of VC in CKD is the disbalance between VC inhibitors and inducers due to failed kidney function. During the dialysis therapy for end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients, inducers and also inhibitors are removed from the patients’ blood. This project (VasCalDi) aims to develop unique optical methods to estimate VC and monitor VC inhibitors removal during dialysis in patients with ESRD. The project's goal is to make the work of hospitals and physicians more efficient and improve the life quality and survival of ESRD patients by monitoring disturbances in VC inhibitor balance and vasculature allowing timely interventions.

"The pilot project aims to bridge the gap between urban planners and urban residents developing a well-being score. This is an innovative method and tool integrating quantitative physiological and subjective psychological indicators for assessing environments that are not only safe and convenient, but also interesting or pleasant or vice versa to define environments that are unsafe, stressful, overstimulating, or unattractive. The result is a visualization of well-being score (WBS) and related parameters as map layers including guidelines for interpretation and use in city planning workflow. The WBS can also be used as an input for solving climate challenges in the city planning. Increased well-being in the city, e.g. better human-environment relations, in turn, creates an overall spill-over effect contributing to secure and mentally, physically, socially, economically healthier city. Narva is the project pilot partner city where the WBS will serve as an additional input for making decisions about the improvements in their living districts to find new options for keeping and attracting citizens and investments. The pilot project team will involve also other cities as the goal is to develop and validate a new service for the FinEst Centre for Smart Cities relevant for many cities in Europe."