Annual report 2023

Highlights

  • The CIM team The CIM core team consists in 2023 of 20 people. In addition, CIM includes 10 external scientific board members, 25 members from the musculoskeletal research group at OsloMet (MUSK Health) and 95 other research collaborators involved in CIM projects
  • Three new AI collaborators have been included in CIM in 2023: Michael Riegler from SimulaMet (since May) and two young researchers, Steven Hicks and Vajira Thambawita from SimulaMet (since October)
  • A young user involvement group has been externally funded and established A 2-year project establishing a young user involvement database for our research projects on adolescents and young adults (HeYoung, Co-occurrent, Bridge-Builder, and the two new AIS projects) has been funded by Stiftelsen Dam
  • Three postdoc fellows have started in 2023
    • Maren Hjelle Guddal and Henriette Jahre have started as postdoc fellows in the HEYoung Intervention Study with funding from Stiftelsen Dam and the Norwegian Physiotherapy Fund. The project is led by Britt Elin Øiestad and the aim is to co-create an intervention with users and stakeholders for adolescents with pain and test the intervention in a feasibility and pilot study
    • Ann Christin Sannes has started as a postdoc fellow in the project “Neuroplasticity and pain: Can a combination of brain imaging (EEG) and gene expression profiling (mRNA sequencing) predict who turns chronic?” with funding from OsloMet. This project is led by Torgeir Moberget. Prof Parisa Gazerani is one of the collaboration partners. The rest of the project partners are Heidi Haavik, Rune Jonassen, Anis Yazidi, Junbai Wang, and Johannes Gjerstad. The entire team acts as co-mentors.
  • Research exchange at CIM
    • Zheng An Toh, PhD student in the AID-Spine Project from Singapore University
    • Quiche Chen, PhD student from the Institute for Musculoskeletal Health in Sidney
    • Crystian Oliveira, senior research at São Paulo State University
    • Margreth Grotle, professor, had a 3 month research stay at the Centre for Pain Impact, Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA)
  • Research visitors at CIM
    • Esther Maas, Asst Prof at Vrije University Amsterdam, the Netherlands
    • Maurits van Tulder, Prof at Vrije University Amsterdam, the Netherlands
    • Simon Johansen, PhD student at Aalborg University, Denmark
  • There are 8 ongoing research projects in CIM
  • The CIM team have 84 publications in scientific journals within 1st of October ‘23
  • Three PhD dissertations and 4 PhD completions
    • Mette Bøymo defended her thesis “Somatocognitive Therapy in the Management of Women with Provoked Vestibulodynia – A multimodal physiotherapy intervention» 10th of March. Daniel Major defended his thesis «Self-managed exercises for patients with shoulder pain: Components to address in a trial» 2nd of June. Daniel Gregor Schultze, neurologist from Oslo University Hospital, defended his thesis “Clinical and neurophysiological characteristics of carpal tunnel syndrome” 20th of June (Prof Margreth Grotle co-supervisor)
    • Four PhD students submitted their thesis within October: Ørjan Nesse Vigdal, Tarjei L Rysstad, and Alexander Tingulstad at OsloMet, and Christer Mjåset at UiO (Prof Margreth Grotle main supervisor). 

Conclusion

The CIM has continued to grow in 2023. The CIM core team consists currently of 20 people. In addition, CIM includes 10 external scientific board members, 25 members from the musculoskeletal research group at OsloMet (MUSK Health) and 64 other research collaborators involved in CIM projects. Importantly, during 2023 the AI expertise has been strengthened by three new collaborators from SimulaMet: Michael Riegler, Steven Hicks and Vajira Thambawita. We have received funding for five new research projects,and we have received funding to establish a young user involvement group to contribute to the four research projects focusing on adolescents and young adults. In CIM we have continued to build a research network, in particular with international researchers, and to disseminate our knowledge through publications and participation in scientific conferences and other meetings.Through these activities we argue that we have successfully initiated activities in order to address the major objectives of CIM in the original proposal, namely built an infrastructure and expertise in applying AI-approaches in musculoskeletal research, obtained funding and promoted career development for young researchers, organised national and international collaboration, and exploiting joint and synergetic efforts. During the final period of CIM we will share our results through peer-reviewed publications, national and international scientific conferences, and disseminate knowledge into the public sphere including policy, and societal impacts of creating such a CIM.