When we started Gregory, we never imagined it would come this far. Our last update was in March of last year, and this is a summary of what happened since.
First, the bad news.
Email troubles
In 2023, we added the option to subscribe to email alerts about new Clinical Trials. For that, we are using an external service to send these automatic emails. The Lisbon Collective covers the monthly costs for this service.
Last October, the account was accessed and used to send over 1.7 million spam emails. This usage would incur a charge of over 1,500€.
From what we could investigate, the security compromise did not come from our side.
As a precaution, the service provider locked our account until the issue was resolved. We followed their instructions and double-checked our security measures.
As of today, emails are back online, and we are staying vigilant. We have also implemented extra security measures.
Improving our AI models with the help of friends
This was mentioned in our Activities Report for 2023, published in February 2024.
Gregory MS was used as a project-based learning case in Nova SBE Masters’ of Business Analytics.
With the guidance of Patrícia Xufre and Tiago Godinho and the dedication of Francisco Lopes Natário Pinto Gomes, Julia Emma Maria Antonioli, Kuba Maciej Bialczyk, Martim Alves Ernesto Esteves, and Nicolò Mazzoleni.
This was possible thanks to Leid Zejnilovic and Lénia Mestrinho, who opened this door when they heard about what we were doing.
The new AI models are finished from their side, and we plan on implementing them as soon as possible.
Same Gregory, more research
Multiple Sclerosis research will always be our main goal, but our software can be used for much more. With that in mind, we made some changes that will allow Gregory to track any number of research topics.
No more Twitter (or X)
We have stopped being active on X because of the new rules to access the API. In the past, we were posting clinical trials and new articles with Zapier. That option is no longer available.
To compensate, we developed a way to post automatically to Blue Sky and Mastodon.
You can find Gregory-MS at these locations:
Brain-Regeneration.com
We saved the best for last.
Any neurologist will agree that the next step for treating MS is to find a way to reverse the damage. And we are looking for ways to help on that front.
Brain-Regeneration.com is our plan to find research funds that will allow us to help neurology researchers find the best papers and most up-to-date reviews. We also plan to use AI to find relationships between papers that indicate good patient outcomes.
This is not an easy step because it means having a dedicated team and not just the determination of the few MS patients and friends who have been keeping us moving forward.
This means we will have to hire researchers to identify the best papers that will be used to train the AI models. It also means having one or two full-time developers and improving our server infrastructure.
On one hand, this isn’t new to us; we have been doing it since 2021; on the other, it means going up a level and towards a field that we know nothing about.
We are looking for people and organisations that may be interested in participating in this project.
Specifically, we need to know how to apply for research funding and how to write this sort of proposal.
Just a little more, and a question
Moving forward, we plan to make these updates more frequent.
If Gregory-MS is useful to you in any way, do you mind reaching out? We would like to know how you are using it and if we can improve it for you in any way.
Please send an email to [email protected].
We look forward to hear from you.
— Bruno and the Gregory-MS team.
