Vitacore Research Collaborative

Research

Five hard, unsolved problems.

Foundational gaps that have resisted decades of effort, selected because they are tractable using formal and computational methods.

  1. HP-01

    Formal verification of AI clinical decision support

    AI clinical decision tools are deployed across health systems with no mathematical proof that they cannot recommend harmful treatment sequences. The MHRA 2026 AI device framework requires safety cases. No accepted formal methodology exists.

    Theory paper: 6–8 weeks. No dataset required. Target: npj Digital Medicine · BMJ Health & Care Informatics · IEEE TDSC

  2. HP-02

    Non-invasive intracranial pressure — the signal fusion gap

    Neurosurgeons still drill skulls to measure brain pressure. Every non-invasive approach — transcranial Doppler, optic nerve sheath, tympanometry — fails calibration. The 95% limits of agreement remain ±7–15 mmHg, clinically unacceptable.

    Theoretical framework paper: 8–10 weeks. Target: Critical Care Medicine · Journal of Neural Engineering · IEEE TBME

  3. HP-03

    Pre-clinical sepsis trajectory modelling

    Sepsis kills 11 million people annually. Existing AI tools detect sepsis after clinical recognition — when the patient is already deteriorating. The pre-clinical trajectory has never been formally modelled. Point-in-time scores cannot reason about trajectory dynamics.

    Framework paper: 8 weeks. Computational demonstration on open ICU databases. Target: Critical Care · The Lancet Digital Health · JMIR AI

  4. HP-04

    Information-theoretic limits of surface physiological sensing

    The wearables industry has invested billions without asking a foundational question: what physiological information is theoretically recoverable from surface measurements, given the physics of signal propagation through biological tissue?

    Pure theory: 6–8 weeks. Target: IEEE Transactions on Information Theory · Nature Biomedical Engineering

  5. HP-05

    Causal digital twin for personalised clinical decision

    Hospitals are buying correlation engines. Clinical AI predicts but cannot answer counterfactual questions: what would happen if we intervened now versus in four hours? The gap between predictive and causal clinical AI has not been bridged by any deployed system.

    Theoretical framework: 10–12 weeks. Target: Journal of Translational Medicine · npj Digital Medicine · Nature Medicine