iDPP@CLEF 2024: The Intelligent Disease Progression Prediction Challenge

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and Multiple Sclerosis (MS) are chronic diseases characterized by progressive or alternate impairment of neurological functions (motor, sensory, visual, cognitive). Patients have to manage alternated periods in hospital with care at home, experiencing a constant uncertainty regarding the timing of the disease acute phases and facing a considerable psychological and economic burden that also involves their caregivers. Clinicians, on the other hand, need tools able to support them in all the phases of the patient treatment, suggest personalized therapeutic decisions, indicate urgently needed interventions. iDPP@CLEF run in CLEF 2022 and 2023, offering tasks on the prediction of ALS and MS progression, using retrospective patient clinical data complemented with environmental data. iDPP@CLEF 2024 will focus on prospective patient data for ALS collected via a dedicated app developed by the BRAINTEASER project and sensor data in the context of clinical trials in Turin, Pavia, Lisbon, and Madrid. For MS, iDPP@CLEF 2024 will rely on retrospective patient data complemented with environmental and pollution data from clinical institutions in Pavia and Turin.