Project’s Partners
UTU | University of Turku
The University of Turku is an inspiring and international academic community of 25,000 students and employees. The university was founded in 1920 by the initiative of the Finnish people with the support of 22,040 donors.Faculties consist of Faculty of Education, Faculty of Humanities, Faculty of Law, Faculty of Medicine, Faculty of Science, Faculty of Social Sciences, Faculty of Technology and Turku School of Economics.
The University of Turku seeks solutions to global challenges with multidisciplinary, international, and effective research. Exceptional research profiles enable unique projects, for example, in sustainable development, biodiversity, marine and maritime environment, health and welfare state, and in digitalisation and future technologies. The University of Turku pioneers in open science and research impacts public debate and is employed in decision-making.
University of Turku is the coordinator of PHASE IV AI and responsible for project management. UTU is the leader of WP1 Coordination & Management and takes care of the daily management tasks of PHASE IV AI in collaboration with main consortium bodies, WP and task leaders and all partners. In WP 3, UTU is leader task of de-identification technologies, including anonymization. Task 4.3. Model validation of WP 3 Model as a Service, MaaS is led by UTU. Expertise of UTU includes privacy-preserving AI, including ML-based synthetic data generation and data protection using mathematical privacy guarantees (differential privacy).
VTT | VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland
VTT is a visionary research, development and innovation partner for companies and the society. We bring together people, business, science and technology to solve the biggest challenges of our time. This is how we create sustainable growth, jobs and wellbeing and bring exponential hope. VTT is one of the leading research organisations in Europe, and we have over 80 years of experience in cutting-edge research and science-based results. Our more than 2,000 professionals work to develop systemic and technological solutions that can bring about fundamental transformation. We promise to always think beyond the obvious.
VTT’s research, development and innovation activities are divided into three business areas in which we develop solutions for companies and society; Carbon neutral solutions, Sustainable products and materials and Digital technologies. At 2023 VTT has a staff of 2213 persons with turnover and other operating income of 261 M€.
In PHASE IV AI VTT leads the Requirements and Specifications work package (WP2), develops methods for synthetic MRI image generation, as well as other health data synthetization. In addition VTT evaluates and improves the methods for synthetic data and models accuracy and quality evaluation as well as investigates how decision support tools and models can be developed with synthetic data and data privacy setups. In wider scope VTT also offers expertise for EHDS alignment for the PHASE IV AI Health Data Hub development to fulfill upcoming secondary usage regulation defined at EHDS Act.
TUAS | Turku University of Applied Sciences
Turku UAS is a higher education institution of 13,000 experts, researchers, students, faculty members and teaching professionals. We create solutions for a better tomorrow – both regionally and globally. Our graduates are practice-oriented professionals with top competencies.
As a significant regional actor, we harbour close ties to businesses and municipalities in Southwest Finland. Turku UAS is the fourth largest technical university in Finland. Students are sought after experts, with 99 % employment within five years of graduating.
With top-of-the-line laboratories and learning environments and as a leading regional force in technology, Turku UAS is a major player in the Finnish tech field. With numerous specialities and study directions to choose from, business, communications, technology, engineering, and many other disciplines are represented.
The Turku UAS Health Technology Research Group, participating in PHASE IV AI project, provides technical services and instrumentation facilities for health technology research and product development. We pioneer in synthetic health data generation, privacy-enhancing technologies, and ethical AI systems tailored for medicine. Our expertise includes:
- Synthetic Data Generation
- Privacy Enhancing Technologies
- Multimodal Data Fusion
- Ethical AI Systems
Our role in the PHASE IV AI project is to lead use case 3, Ischemic stroke and the development of the Model as a Service (MaaS) toolbox. We will also take part in several other work packages and tasks that utilize our capabilities in medical data research and enable us to contribute to the overall goal of speeding up medical research through better data use and sharing. These other WPs include work on health data hub and data as a service (DaaS).
KUL | KU Leuven
KU Leuven, founded in 1834, is a prominent Belgian research university located in Leuven, Belgium. KU Leuven is the largest university in Belgium and the BENELUx. In 2021–22, more than 65,000 students were enrolled, with 21% being international students. Renowned for its academic excellence, it consistently ranks among the top universities globally. KU Leuven is recognized for its diverse range of programs, cutting-edge research, and a commitment to fostering innovation. With a rich history and a focus on interdisciplinary collaboration, it remains a leading institution in education and research. Since 2016 KU Leuven is leading the list of the most innovative universities of Europe.
In the context of Phase IV KU Leuven will be mainly leading 2 different tasks and a use-case. We will be responsible for the creation of metrics for quantification of the utility and privacy of the synthetically generated data and we will also lead the Prostate Cancer use case where we will try to explore Real World Data in order to predict different outcomes of interest for patients with prostate cancer.
EUT | Fundació Eurecat
Eurecat is the leading Technology Centre of Catalonia, providing the industrial and business sector with differential technology and advanced expertise.
The centre offers to their innovation needs and boosts their competitiveness in a fast-paced environment. It brings together the expertise of 650 professionals who generate a volume of income of 50M€ per year. Serving more than a thousand companies, Eurecat is involved in 200 projects of R&D national and international with high strategic value
EURECAT plays a crucial role in the PHASE IV AI project for healthcare data synthesis and disease treatments. In the area of Data as a Service (DaaS), the EURECAT’s Digital Health and Multimedia Technologies Units lead the development efforts in one of the work packages, primarily aimed at designing, researching, and implementing robust solutions for the privacy-compliant generation of health data. This involves pioneering work in cutting-edge de-identification and anonymization tools, as well as deep generative models. These advancements will be ultimately integrated into the core technologies of a Health Data Hub, ensuring strong and reliable anonymization practices while enabling on-demand data access. A particular challenge investigated by EURECAT within the project is the utilization of methods for synthetic data generation to forecast lung cancer evolution.
To its innovative role in technological development, EURECAT also takes on the responsibility of ensuring the scientific and technical outcomes of the project adhere to high-quality standards. The organization also plays a pivotal role in conducting comprehensive risk assessments associated with the various activities within the project.
INESC TEC | Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering, Technology and Science
INESC TEC is a private non-profit research association, with Public Interest status, dedicated to scientific research and technological development, technology transfer, advanced consulting and training, and pre-incubation of new technology-based companies.
As an institution operating at the interface of the academic and business worlds, bringing closer together academia, companies, public administration, and society, INESC TEC typically applies the knowledge and results generated as part of its research in technology transfer projects, seeking value creation and immediate social relevance.
Mission: The mission of INESC TEC is to achieve advancement in science and technology and to enable science-based innovation through the transfer of new knowledge and technologies to industry, services and public administration.
Vision: INESC TEC vision is to be a leading Science and Technology Institution at international level, perceived as an important world player, in the domains of Computer Science, Industrial and Systems Engineering, Networked Intelligent Systems, and Power and Energy.
Values: Innovation excellence, People-centered, Research freedom, Cooperation, Social responsibility.
We will mainly focus on Artificial Intelligence algorithms for generating artificial data, and on the development of software technologies that will enable privacy-preserving data access through distributed computing.
Furthermore, INESC TEC will assure Scientific and Technical Coordination of the project.
LXS | LeanXcale SL
LeanXcale is a spinoff company from the Technical University of Madrid (Universidad Politecnica de Madrid – UPM), developing an ultra-scalable transactional database that is full-SQL with Analytical capabilities (HTAP database). Founded in 2015, LeanXcale is established on deep technical research into distributed systems and data management. LeanXcale co-founders produced the first version of the algorithm with highly successful results – the delivery of the perfect solution for solving the biggest and most problematic bottleneck in databases for decades.
LeanXcale is leading T2.2, which is responsible for the specification of the data source and data harmonization requirements. LeanXcale is also involved in all technical WPs, and more precisely in the Data-as-a-Service and Model-as-a-Service Toolboxes, along with the integration activities of the Health Data Hub.
FJBE | Fujitsu Technology Solutions SA N/V
Fujitsu Belgium is located in Diegem and currently employs over 300 permanent employees and has over 280 external collaborators working at the service of our customers. We offer a full portfolio of IT products and multiple solutions and services and directly serve numerous sectors. Fujitsu Belgium specializes in IT services including Multi-Cloud, Blockchain and ServiceNow, as well as products including Hybrid Cloud and Data-Driven Transformation. In addition, we work closely with 4 distributors and over 100 valued business partners all over Belgium.
FJBE will support the Phase IV AI project mainly in leading the creation of the Health Data Hub (WP5) with a data market, DaaS and MaaS tools, and a repository. The Health Data hub will facilitate data demand and supply and enable transactions of the Data Market. Next to this, the Health Data Hub aims to provide quality checked synthetic data or multiparty computation services, as well as temporary storage of models and synthetic data, while being aligned with the principles and definitions of the upcoming EHDS. Fujitsu Belgium also acts as task leader of certain task in WP7. Here, Fujitsu Belgium will be responsible of delineating the exploitation strategy of PHASE IV AI, individually (per organization) and as a consortium. Finally, Fujitsu Belgium will be responsible of ensuring sustainability and maintenance of the Health Data Hub post-project.
FJLU | Fujitsu Technology Solutions (Luxembourg) SA – Luxembourg
Driven by its mission to make the world more sustainable by building trust in society through innovation, Fujitsu is a global leader in digital transformation and information and communications technologies (ICT).
With a rich history dating back to 1935 and over 130,000 dedicated employees in more than 150 countries around the world, Fujitsu has established itself as a key player in providing cutting-edge solutions and services in areas such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity that together drive the transformation of sustainability.
With a disruptive eye, Fujitsu Luxembourg supports companies on their digital journey, providing innovative solutions that meet the evolving needs of business and society.
In line with its “Uvance” approach and commitment to societal trust and sustainability, Fujitsu actively adheres to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted in 2015. Its goal serves as a pledge to contribute to the achievement of these global sgoals by 2030.
Fujitsu Luxembourg as a technology provider is responsible for the security and privacy requirements relevant for the secure processing, storage and sharing of health data.
VHIR | Vall d’hebron Institute of Research
We are a public sector institution that promotes and develops biomedical research, innovation, and teaching at Vall d’Hebron University Hospital. Since 1994, we have been working to identify and implement new solutions to society’s health problems, achieving leadership and excellence in clinical and translational biomedical research in the national and international spheres.
We are an institution that promotes, develops and transfers research of the Vall d’Hebron University Hospital. Through international leadership and excellence in our research, we improve people’s health and quality of life.
We want the research of Vall d’Hebron to transform: creating an impact on both health and quality of life of patients and society, generating social and economic wealth in a responsible and sustainable way, and becoming a global benchmark for new health ecosystems.
VHIR as an affiliated entity is a public sector institution that promotes and develops biomedical research, innovation, and teaching at Vall d’Hebron University Hospital.
The role of VHIR was planned to focus on research related to use cases in WP6, and supporting task in other WPs. The main use case for VHIR is UC1 lung cancer.
AIN | AINIGMA Technologies
AINIGMA Technologies brings together a team of biomedical engineers, medical doctors and business consultants with a long track record in the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions, mainly, but not exclusively, for Healthcare applications. The team of AINIGMA has been involved in both research and commercial projects with different roles, which have given us valuable experience in the development of AI algorithms, alongside with expert consulting, cognitive knowledge and efficient project management of large-scale European and national projects. The diverse background of the team members allows us to identify and address real-life problems from multiple perspectives and promote the exploitable results effectively in the right market direction.
AINIGMA will be responsible for data harmonization of medical data and mapping it to the OMOP Common Data Model, enabling standardized analysis and characterization of healthcare data. AINIGMA will lead all relevant data harmonization tasks, namely: T3.1, T4.1 and T5.1
UNIVIE | University of Vienna
The University of Vienna is the oldest public research university in the German-speaking world and one of the largest institutions of higher education in Europe. In October 2017, the Department of Innovation and Digitalisation in Law was founded to address emerging legal issues and challenges emanating from rapid technological innovations. Anchored in a European context, the department delves into legal issues surrounding information technology and intellectual property laws, with a particular focus on privacy/data protection, data security, emerging technologies, and data governance. The department actively engages in numerous third-party-funded research projects centered around the interplay between law and technology in healthcare, law enforcement and data spaces, with the ambition to foster international collaboration and innovation.
The University of Vienna (UNIVIE) offers legal expertise to the project, focusing on areas such as data protection, information technology law, and the complex legal issues posed by emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI).
ENG | Engineering Ingegneria Informatica Spa
Engineering is the Digital Transformation Company, leader in Italy and expanding its global footprint, with around 15,000 associates, with over 70 offices spread across Europe, the United States, and South America and global delivery.
The Engineering Group, consisting of over 70 companies in 14 countries, has been supporting the continuous evolution of companies and organizations for more than 40 years, thanks to a deep understanding of business processes in all market segments, fully leveraging the opportunities offered by advanced digital technologies and proprietary solutions.
With a strong and relentless focus on Innovation, through our R&I division that comprises over 450 researchers and data scientists (and a global innovation network of universities, startups, and research firms), the Group continues to invest in international R&D projects while exploring groundbreaking technologies and developing new business solutions. The Group continuously invests in human capital, with the internal “Enrico Della Valle” IT & Management Academy, which provides continuous upskilling and reskilling paths for both company employees and stakeholders, with over 32,000 training days per year.
The Engineering Group boasts a diversified portfolio built around proprietary solutions, best-of-breed market solutions, and managed services, and continues to expand its expertise through M&As and partnerships with leading technology players. Our 40+ years presence in all market segments (from Finance to Healthcare, from Utilities to Manufacturing and many more) has allowed us to build deep knowledge of business needs and anticipate them by exploring constantly the evolution of technologies, especially in the field of Cloud, Cybersecurity, Metaverse, Artificial Intelligence and Data.
This unique approach positions Engineering as a key player in the creation of digital ecosystems that bridge the gap between different markets, while developing composable solutions that ultimately foster a continuous Business transformation.
ENG’s role in the project is focused on architecture design and system integration. ENG will provide supporting expertise in data science and software engineering.
SU | Sabanci University
Sabanci University is internationally recognized as one of the most research-oriented and innovative universities in Türkiye and ranked within the top 1% of universities in the world. The institution’s mission is to foster internationally competent individuals with a strong sense of social responsibility, evident in its diverse academic programs and cutting-edge facilities. Students benefit from the freedom to shape their own programs, supported by the university’s counseling system. Sabanci’s research spans science, technology, and arts, with dedicated centers in various fields. Offering 11 undergraduate, 50 master’s, and 17 PhD programs, the university provides interdisciplinary education to approximately 4500 undergraduates and 1054 graduate students. In 2024, Times Higher Education ranked Sabanci University 351-400 globally. With active research funding of nearly €40 million, derived from national and international sources (40% from EC), the university is actively involved in numerous projects. This commitment is reflected in a substantial number of publications and patent applications, showcasing Sabanci University’s significant contributions to knowledge and innovation.
Sabanci University’s (SU) contribution to PHASE IV AI is focused on the development and implementation of advanced cryptographic technologies. SU utilizes its expertise in FPGA architectures and CUDA codes to address scalability issues with SMPC and FHE schemes. The goal is to develop highly scalable and hardware-accelerated frameworks for both cryptographic techniques, making them more efficient and effective.
VARHA | The wellbeing services county of Southwest Finland
Varha (The Wellbeing services county of Southwest Finland) is responsible for organizing social and health services and rescue operations. The county is made up of 27 municipalities, a hospital district, special care services and rescue services. Varha provides all the health and social services, the services for the elderly, the disability services and the emergency services produced by the wellbeing services county (Varha) listed by municipality. We also give Information services for research and teaching. We support data-driven scientific research in healthcare and scientific innovations, aiming to better and more efficient future treatments and health services.
The Wellbeing services county of Southwest Finland (Varha) is a large, university-level regional primary and specialized health care provider in Finland. In particular, Turku university hospital has traditionally had strong health data processing services to support scientific register studies and R&D activities. The role of Varha in this project is, in addition to specification and coordination activities, to develop data as a service (DaaS) models and validate them through different use cases together with other project partners.
INPH | Inpher SARL
Inpher, Inc. is the leader in privacy-enhancing computation that empowers organizations to collaborate on sensitive data seamlessly and securely across teams and borders. Inpher’s award-winning XOR Platform employs machine learning and AI in order to remove data barriers and silos while delivering the highest level of trust and precision in even the most complex data collaboration initiatives. Founded by world-renowned cryptographers and engineers, Inpher has long been recognized as a pioneer in the fields of secure Multiparty Computation (MPC), Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), Federated Learning (FL), and other combinations of privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs). Inpher continues to deliver enterprise ready capabilities and real world examples.
For more information on Inpher, please visit us at www.inpher.io and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.
As a leader in privacy-enhancing technologies and secure AI – Inpher empowers organizations to securely collaborate and compute on sensitive data. Inpher’s globally recognized experts in cryptography, privacy and AI enables them to apply years of research and technological innovation to the Phase 4 AI-EUProject. By leveraging Inpher’s XOR Platform to develop a privacy-compliant federated health care data ecosystem provides a one-stop collaboration hub for data utilization that further unlocks the full potential of AI and data analytics in healthcare. With XOR, all parties will be able to develop applications for machine learning workflows using medical data – thus allowing for greater collaboration and AI development with cryptographic privacy, security and compliance guarantees.
RG | Resilience Guard GmbH
Resilience Guard GmbH is a boutique consultancy company offering professional services and training related to Business Continuity Management, Resilience Management, Crisis Management, Risk Management & Business Assurance, across Europe. RG having acquired many years of expertise in the area of Resiliency for both organizations as well as municipalities and governments, will bring all the practical knowledge and application of resiliency approaches so as to ensure great applicability of the proposed solutions.
Resilience Guard GmbH leads Work Package 7 “Interactions with Stakeholders” which is related to the dissemination, communication and exploitation activities of the project. Specifically, this WP aims to establish a continuous dialogue with relevant stakeholders, to increase general awareness about the secondary uses of health data and European health data space and to exploit PHASE IV AI Health Data Hub including its technical services. Additionally, Resilience Guard GmbH is responsible for Task 6.5 “Stakeholders’ Feedback and Evaluation” which focuses on collecting and analysing stakeholders’ feedback from all use cases towards evaluating the PHASE IV AI solutions.
CHUV | Lausanne University Hospital
The Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV) is one of five Swiss university hospitals. Through its collaboration with the Faculty of Biology and Medicine of the University of Lausanne, CHUV plays a key role in the areas of medical care, biomedical research and education. The “Laboratoire de recherche en neuroimagerie” (LREN) consists of a cross-disciplinary team of basic and clinical neuroscientists with an interest in the role of human brain structure and function in neurological disorders and healthy aging.
LREN/CHUV develops and applies neuroimaging analysis methods to study brain plasticity, brain repair mechanisms, and the pathological processes that underlie neurodegenerative diseases. Key Expertise include : Computational anatomy methods, Brain disorders, Neurodegeneration, stroke, psychiatric diseases, Univariate and multivariate statistical methods, MRI physics, Neuroimaging analysis. CHUV will be developing dedicated workflows for privacy-preserving computer-assisted early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) jointly INPHER and will address both the researchers’ and clinicians’ perspectives The extensive expertise of t CHUV on statistical parametric mapping (SPM) of clinically relevant MRI data as well as on feature engineering will contribute to that aspect (contribution in WP4) including data harmonization (WP5), the users needs, ethical and privacy requirements contribution (WP2 and WP6).
NTU | Nottingham Trent University
Established in 1843, Nottingham Trent University (NTU) has a long history of unlocking potential, breaking down barriers and making a real difference to lives around the world. With over 40,000 students and staff spanning five university sites, NTU is one of the largest and most influential higher education institutions in the UK. NTU is a university that is committed to driving forward meaningful change and receives a wide range of prestigious awards for its research, dynamism and innovation.
Within the PHASE IV AI project, NTU is leading the work on Validation and Use Cases, and tasks related to the coordination of the requirements gathering and piloting of the developed technologies at different sites across countries including Belgium, Finland, Portugal, Spain, and the UK.
