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Inherited heart diseases affect many people and can have a major impact on patients and their families. PRECISE aims to improve care by enabling earlier diagnosis, better prediction of disease risk, and more personalised treatment. The consortium brings together doctors, researchers, patient organisations and other partners to improve access to genetic care, develop practical tools for risk assessment, and strengthen education for patients, relatives and healthcare professionals. Ultimately, PRECISE aims to support better quality of life, informed choices and more effective healthcare for people with inherited heart diseases. The research  Inherited heart diseases, including cardiomyopathies and arrhythmia syndromes, affect many people and can lead to serious outcomes such as sudden cardiac death and heart failure. Although genetic testing and clinical care have improved, the cause of disease remains unclear in many patients, and access to genetic testing within families is still insufficient. PRECISE aims to address these gaps by improving early detection, risk prediction and personalised treatment for people with inherited heart diseases. The consortium will study how genetic, clinical, environmental, age-related and sex-specific factors influence disease development, severity and treatment response. Using this knowledge, PRECISE will develop and validate models to identify individuals at risk and predict disease outcomes more accurately. The consortium will focus on structural and electrical heart diseases, including hypertrophic, dilated and arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy and cardiac ryanodinopathies. PRECISE will also evaluate the impact of its approach on quality of life, psychological burden, healthcare use and societal costs, while addressing communication, ethical and legal barriers to implementation in clinical care. The origin  The PRECISE consortium builds on previously established collaborations withing DCVA consortia and brings together leaders in the field of inherited heart disease with a strong past track record. The team consists of a strong mix of scientific, clinical and societal partners across the entire knowledge chain, who have contributed to the co-design of the PRECISE project. Researchers from 6 university medical centers, 3 universities, and 2 universities of applied sciences join forces with 8 co-funding organizations and a broad palette of cooperation partners and experience experts. Moreover, talented mid-career scientists are part of the team and will benefit from well-established infrastructure and broad expertise.

About 10% of the COVID-19 affected patients develop critical illness with a high mortality rate. This critical illness appears to be strongly linked with cardiovascular disease, as the prevalence of cardiovascular comorbidities and risk factors (such as diabetes and obesity) are often found among hospitalized COVID-19 patients. The consortium COVID@Heart believes that mitigating this cardiovascular burden of Covid-19 should start early, while patients are (still) outside the hospital. The Research COVID@Heart has three core activities: Develop a tool to identify high-risk cardiovascular patients with COVID-19 in a home environment, before the critical illness emerges. This tool will allow general practitioners to better notify high-risk patients, monitor them more closely (e.g. by using home saturation measurements), prescribe preventive cardiovascular medication earlier ('moon shot') and refer them to a hospital promptly when needed. Create a diagnostic tool to improve early differentiation between COVID-19 and a myocardial infarction, addressing the challenge of overlapping symptoms faced by general practitioners. Design a questionnaire supplemented by select biomarkers and blood tests to enhance the detection of cardiovascular disease in COVID-19 survivors experiencing prolonged symptoms of fatigue and shortness of breath, as these symptoms are potentially linked to accelerated subclinical cardiovascular disease. Origin Accurate information on how cardiovascular patients fared while still at home is lacking. This information is crucial to prevent hospital admissions. Therefore, COVID@HEART focuses on people who are not hospitalized but are at home and treated by their general practitioners. The Dutch Heart Foundation supports and funds this research into the best treatment for cardiovascular patients with a coronavirus infection.