Highlights

• The innovation and research activities in CIM has been organized in three research Pillars and three cross-bridging topic groups, which are designed to form a translational trajectory from clinical research to implementation and dissemination of the innovative and effective interventions
• The internal CIM team consists currently of 14 people, in addition there are 10 external scientific board members
• We have arranged two scientific board meetings; the first in September 2021 and the second in March 2022
• A user involvement group has been implemented in the CIM structure, and secures a close collaboration with different users and stakeholders involved in our research projects
• Successful application to the Norwegian Research Council (NFR) for the AID-Spine project with the full title “Applying Artificial Intelligence in Developing Personalized and Sustainable Healthcare for Spinal Disorders”, led by Margreth Grotle, OsloMet (11 mill, started 1.12.21). The project includes one postdoc (Bjørnar Berg) and two PhD positions (Lise Grethe Kjønø, OsloMet, and Zheng An Toh, Singapore), and a large group of national and international collaborators
• Establishment of the internal funded research project “Co-occurrent pain and psychological distress among young adults”, led by Kåre Rønn Richardsen. The project includes one postdoc (Olaf Fjeld) and one PhD with computer science background (not employed yet)
• Prof Grotle is research partner in another NFR funded project with international partners; the ReISE project with the full title “Returning people with persistent pain to work using Individual Supported Employment placements”, led by Robert Froud, Høgskolen Kristiania (11 mill, also started 1.12.21)
• Prof Grotle is invited as the Norwegian stakeholder in the KAHLO European Spine Collaboration for Chronic Low Back Pain (cLBP), which has submitted a first stage application to the Horizon-HLTH-2022-Tool-12-01-two-stage: Computational models for new patient stratification strategies (1st stage 01-Feb-22, 2nd stage 06-sept-22). The project is led by professor Jeremy Fairbank, Oxford University
• CIM has been presented in several meetings, seminars and conferences throughout 2021, among others in the MUSS conference in November 2021, which is a National Research Network for Musculoskeletal Research in Norway, led from FORMI, Oslo University Hospital (prof Grotle has been part of the scientific board since its origin in 2012)
• Researchers and PhD fellows arranged the second course in Prognosis Research, December 2021
• Two internal research seminars with external scientific reviewers/collaborators were arranged in December 2021
• Successful application to the call for a Bridge Builder project on musculoskeletal health and work at OsloMet, led by Parisa Gazerani. The project includes a large group of different stakeholders, including one NAV office at Grünerløkka in Oslo
• CIM has several ongoing research projects in the MUSKHealth research group (Pillar III); the first PhD dissertation will be held 13th of May (Henriette Jahre), and four PhD candidates are submitting their thesis before summer (Daniel Major, Fiona Aanesen, Rikke Munk Killingmo, and Mette Bøymo).
• The CIM team have 40 publications in international referee-based journals in 2021
• Margreth Grotle received the research award 2021 at the Faculty of Health Science at OsloMet

Conclusion

The Centre for Intelligent Musculoskeletal health (CIM) was formally started in August 2121. The goal of the CIM is to build academic environment for developing innovative and effective intelligent musculoskeletal health interventions. And to create an infrastructure for utilizing technological innovations within musculoskeletal field. The start of the CIM work has been successful. Two applications were submitted to the NFR in February 2021 (AID-spine and HEYoung) and the application for the AID-Spine project was funded. Total 5 applications were submitted from CIM for the internal calls. The AID spine project has started and one Phd student and one post doctor have been employed. The Co-occurrent project has started with one post doctor employed. The CIM core group has been extended from four members to 14 members including post doc, several PhD students and user community members. CIM activities has been also broadly disseminated through several international seminars and events organized by the CIM group.