After yesterday’s reflections on two years of INDICATE, today was all about putting the vision into practice! 

Prof. Dr. Christian Jung opened the second day of the INDICATE Consortium Meeting with a live demonstration of the INDICATE platform before moving on to the central question of the day: What is federated learning, and how to make it work across hospitals in Europe?

Jan van den Brand took us through the federated data platform, how it works and the roadmap towards training the very first federated machine learning model on INDICATE infrastructure. The principle sounds simple, but has major implications for how we can collaborate: Data stays. Insights travel. 

Dr. Chong Shen Ng of Flower Labs introduced Flower and showed us how collaborative AI works in practice. From the difference between centralised and decentralised AI to the architecture behind federated learning, his live demo gave us a look under the hood of the technology enabling this new way of working.

Joost Huiskens from Microsoft Netherlands brought another important perspective: “Clinicians do not interact with models, they interact with solutions”. If we want AI to improve daily clinical practice, we need to think beyond developing good models. We need solutions that are robust, resilient, sustainable and able to fit into real clinical environments. Not only now, but also in the future. We need to think about achieving sovereignty together.

And that brings us to one of today’s second question: What does a hospital actually need to participate in INDICATE? 

With Maarten Ligtenberg, Celia Alvarez Romero, Mark Driessen, Jan van den Brand and Bert Cappelle, we moved into a hands-on onboarding workshop. Participants worked through the steps required for both data providers and data users who will be using the tools, templates and guidance being developed within INDICATE. We collected experiences, identified obstacles and used feedback from our partners to make onboarding clearer and more scalable.

This afternoon, we went from onboarding an organisation to actually starting a research project on the INDICATE platform. Marcel Giemsa from University Hospital Düsseldorf guided us through the steps to onboard on the federated data platform of INDICATE.

First the organisation is onboarded, then its users can start creating and submitting research projects.The onboarding process was shared, tested and discussed with the consortium today. The feedback gathered will help us further improve the process before making the guidance available to future data providers and users.

We then explored key practical challenges through interactive challenge tables, covering topics from data dictionary validation and sandbox requirements to scalable legal and ethical approvals, educational needs and communication ecosystem engagement.

Building a European federated infrastructure is not just about making the technology work. It is also about making it clear and practical for organisations and researchers to actually use it.

More insights from our consortium meeting tomorrow on Day 3!

Day 1 in Rome: Data stays, insight travels

Today we kicked off the INDICATE Consortium Meeting 2026 in Rome – Italy, hosted by Fondazione Policlinico Universitario Agostino Gemelli IRCCS.

We are halfway through the INDICATE project. Time to reflect on how far we have come and where we want to go next. From the soft launch in Brussels, to our first official consortium meeting in Seville in 2025, and now Rome, INDICATE has developed into a growing European community.

The main message of today was: “Data stays, insight travels.” Hospitals need to remain in control of their data. At the same time, better research and AI requires access to larger volumes of high-quality health data. INDICATE’s federated infrastructure is designed to bring those two needs together.

Prof. Dr. Dr. Christian Jung, INDICATE PI, reflected on the progress made during the first half of the project and shared some of the achievements so far. 

Dr. Michel van Genderen highlighted that INDICATE is not just about building a product or a platform. It will work because we are building a community and we can only achieve our ambitions if we do it together.

Our work is part of a much bigger European ambition.

Our EU Project Officer Erica Martinelli shared the European perspective on AI, with a clear objective: “Make Europe the AI continent in the world!” It requires computing capacity, appropriate regulation, common European Data Spaces and AI skills for healthcare professionals, and combining innovation with trust.

We also received valuable perspectives from our external experts.

Emma-Jane Spencer, from our External Ethics Advisory Board, challenged us to keep ethics at the centre as the technology develops with continued attention to privacy, bias, explainability, data diversity, patient involvement and governance. 

From Prof. Filip Haegdorens we heard that data on staffing and workload can provide crucial insights into quality of care and patient outcomes and should be added to the INDICATE data dictionary. Michael Beil challenged us to think about how AI will change clinical decision-making and workflows.

And David van Laere brought the discussion back to the bedside. Ultimately, AI models need to become tools clinicians can actually use. As he put it: “Hospitals, data infrastructures, and companies need to work together to create an ecosystem where risks, revenue and success are shared, because ultimately we all want the same: to save and improve patients’ lives.” That is a powerful reminder of where all this work needs to lead.

Finally, our Work Package Leads shared what has already been achieved across INDICATE from common data models to legal and ethical frameworks, sustainable governance, a user portal and technical infrastructure to run federated analyses, education and communication, and our clinical use cases as demonstrators.

Just as valuable were the lessons learned: pilot early and often, coordinate across work packages, support data providers, recognise dependencies and never underestimate the importance of data quality.

🎉 And after reflecting on two years of progress, there was also a moment to celebrate what we have achieved together, celebrating the confetti moments of the day! A fitting way to mark how far this community has come.

Tomorrow, we move from reflection to implementation: How can we make the infrastructure sustainable beyond the end of the project? Can it support other clinical areas beyond intensive care, such as cardiology and trauma? And how can we make it easier for new hospitals to join?

From data to insights. From infrastructure to clinical impact. On to Day 2!

The INDICATE Communication Network Meeting, organised by Work Package 5, took place on 9 September 2026.

A key contribution to the meeting was a presentation by Arie de Haan (Principal Architect INDICATE) on building the INDICATE architecture. Arie presented an overview of the project’s enterprise architecture and explained how this provides the foundation for the development of the INDICATE ecosystem. Using the analogy of constructing a building, he illustrated how a shared architectural blueprint enables the different technical components developed across the work packages to come together as one coherent platform.

Maaike van Zuilen (INDICATE Communication advisor) presented an overview of the communication work carried out within INDICATE. Her presentation highlighted the communication activities undertaken throughout the project, the materials and resources developed, and the progress and achievements made so far. She also reflected on how these activities have supported the visibility of INDICATE, strengthened engagement with stakeholders and contributed to communicating the project’s objectives, developments and results to a wider audience.

The meeting further provided a valuable opportunity for participants to exchange experiences and share perspectives on communicating INDICATE within their respective organisations. 

We’re happy to announce that the INDICATE Help Center is now live!

The help center is specifically set up for data providers who have technical questions related to the INDICATE portal. By submitting a ticket, they can easily reach the right support and receive focused and efficient assistance with the technical questions.

You can access the help center directly via here or the button on the INDICATE website.

The 2026 Mobilising Computable Biomedical Knowledge (MCBK) Global Meeting will take place online on 13 and 14 October, bringing together the international community made up of representatives from academia, the scientific community and the public sector who work together to ensure that biomedical knowledge in computable format is easy to find, accessible, interoperable and reusable.

This year’s meeting will be fully virtual, with session times designed to accommodate participants across the globe.

For the Americas & Europe
October 13–14
9 AM – 12 PM US Eastern
10 AM – 1 PM Argentina & Brazil
2 PM – 5 PM UK
3 PM – 6 PM Central Europe

For Australia, New Zealand & Asia
October 14
9:30 AM – 12:30 PM India
12 PM – 3 PM China
3 PM – 6 PM Australia Eastern
5 PM – 8 PM New Zealand

Celia Alvarez-Romero (Wp2), is part of the European MCBK community and contributes to the organisation of the Global Meeting. Her involvement highlights the close connection between international developments in computable biomedical knowledge and the broader perspective of INDICATE on strengthening research and health data infrastructures.

More information and registration are available on the MCBK website.

Led by Bert Cappelle (Ghent University Hospital), the second session of the Legal Framework training sessions, provided participants with a practical overview of the legal and organisational framework required before researchers can access healthdata. 

Rather than focusing on legislation alone, the training demonstrated how legal, ethical and technical safeguards work together to enable secure and responsible data sharing across Europe.

Participants were guided through the complete data access process, covering the role of the Consortium Agreement, the Study Protocol, local ethical approval, the Data Sharing Agreement and the Secure Processing Environment (SPE). Together, these elements ensure that data access is always linked to a clearly defined research purpose, with responsibilities, conditions and governance agreed before any study begins.

As Bert Cappelle highlights the importance of this subject: “Federated research succeeds when strong technology meets strong governance.” Clear governance, transparent agreements and collaboration between all partners are essential to protect sensitive health data while enabling high-quality research across the INDICATE consortium.