Dragon (The RapiD and SecuRe AI enhAnced DiaGnosis, Precision Medicine and Patient EmpOwerment Centered Decision Support System for Coronavirus PaNdemics) was a  Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) project that received awarded €11.4 million in funding. The project, which concluded in March 2024, and ran for three years, and helped to identify patients who have got COVID-19 or novel coronaviruses that may arise in the future.

DRAGON used artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to deliver a decision support system for precise coronavirus diagnosis using CT scanning. It also aimed to be able to better predict the outcomes of patients.

The DRAGON project was coordinated by the University of Maastricht with Radiomics as the Project Lead, and partners which are comprised of high-tech small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), academic research institutes, biotechnology and pharmacological partners, and ELF and ERS.

The goal of the DRAGON project, was to make patients more aware of what to do and clinicians to have a better understanding of the perspectives of patients.

This project received funding from the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement No 101005122. The JU receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and EFPIA. More information is available at: https://www.imi.europa.eu/.

DRAGON is one of eight projects fighting COVID-19 that were funded by the IMI in Spring 2020:

• COVID-RED: COVID-19 infections – Remote Early Detection
• DECISION: A miniaturized disposable molecular diagnostics platform for combatting coronavirus infections
• Impentri: Development of an intravenous imatinib formulation for COVID-19 acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS)
• KRONO: Evaluation of a production ready portable, point-of-need platform (instrument and reagents), direct from nasal swab test for the molecular diagnostic detection of COVID-19 infection
• MAD-CoV 2: Modern approaches for developing antivirals against SARS-CoV-2
• RAPID-COVID: Robust automation and point of care identification of COVID
• CARE: Corona accelerated R&D in Europe