The SEARCH (Synthetic hEalthcare dAta goveRnanCe Hub) project is a multidisciplinary initiative focused on the creation of synthetic health data and facilitating secure data sharing across the biomedical ecosystem.

SEARCH will address critical challenges in accessing health data by creating a platform that enables the secure and privacy preserving search, sharing and analysis of multimodal health data. Coordinated by Trinity College Dublin, through the Trinity Translational Medicine Institute (TTMI), located at St. James’s Hospital, the initiative brings together a consortium of 26 partners from across Europe, including the TIC Salut i Social Foundation, synthetic data experts, healthcare providers and solution developers, to unlock new opportunities for innovation in data driven healthcare. Funded by the Innovative Health Initiative (IHI JU), SEARCH has an initial budget of more than €15.2 million.

Objectives

SEARCH aims to accelerate healthcare innovation by generating FAIRified synthetic data for use in AI and machine learning models, while enabling large scale data collaborations and preserving privacy and regulatory compliance. The project will provide reliable methodologies for generating synthetic data that meet the highest standards of accuracy and applicability, significantly increasing the availability of interoperable datasets. These datasets will be used to develop AI based tools to support diagnosis, personalised treatments and health outcome predictions, improving patient care while reducing privacy risks.

The combination of data clean rooms and federated learning enables different institutions to collaborate and gain insights from decentralised data sources while ensuring that patient data remains securely stored at its source. SEARCH’s innovative synthetic data generation techniques will not only democratise access to health data but will also lay the foundations for new diagnostic and therapeutic tools powered by AI and machine learning.

Role of the TIC Salut i Social Foundation

The TIC Salut i Social Foundation actively participates in the SEARCH project in tasks related to designing frameworks to assess the credibility and safety of synthetic data used to develop AI models.

Participating organisations

• Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, coordinator
• Adaptit GmbH, Germany
• Amgen N.V., Belgium
• Byte Solutions Unlimited, Greece
• Corsano Health BV, Netherlands
• DQ Technologies AG, Switzerland
• Fundació de Gestió Sanitària de l’Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, Spain
• TIC Salut i Social Foundation, Spain
• German Oncology Center, Cyprus
• Hellenic Healthcare Group, Greece
• Hemex Benelux, Belgium
• IBM Ireland Limited, Ireland
• IQVIA RDS Ireland Ltd, Ireland
• Maggioli SpA, Italy
• Medicalvalues GmbH, Germany
• Motilent Limited, United Kingdom
• Odense University Hospital, Denmark
• Philips Medical Systems Technologies Ltd, Israel
• Region of Southern Denmark, Denmark
• Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Sweden
• Simula Metropolitan Centre for Digital Engineering, Norway
• Syntheticus AG, Switzerland
• Takeda Pharmaceuticals International AG
• TECNALIA Research & Innovation, Spain
• Ubitech Limited, Greece
• University of Copenhagen, Denmark
• University of Thessaly, Greece

Funding

The project is supported by the Innovative Health Initiative Joint Undertaking (IHI JU) under grant agreement No 101172997. The JU receives support from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme and COCIR, EFPIA, including Vaccines Europe, EuropaBio and MedTech Europe.