VASCOVID was one of the thirteen projects selected by the European Commission special call for addressing the COVID-19 pandemic. Its objective was to deploy and mature a portable, non-invasive and real-time health monitoring platform for this purpose.

The VASCOVID platform combines two bio-photonics technologies, time-resolved near-infrared spectroscopy (TR-NIRS) and diffuse correlation spectroscopy (DCS), and is the fruit of long-term collaboration between core project partners in previous research projects. The goal was to design the platform to meet the needs of a typical ICU dealing with COVID-19 and other patients requiring ventilation, as well as to leverage large-scale testing of new treatment procedures and therapies, aimed to address microvascular impairment and to reduce extubation failure on ICU patients.

PIONIRS contributed to the project with its TR-NIRS technology, providing state-of-art hardware for the VASCOVID platform, and helping other partner in the overall integration and characterization of the final system.