Partners

VPHi, the Virtual Physiological Human Institute for Integrative Biomedical Research, is an international non-profit organisation with the mission to ensure that medicine is fully realised, universally adopted and effectively used both in research and clinic. This will be done by integrating quantitative biological knowledge – from molecular to cell, tissue, organ and whole-body scales – and translating it into clinical practice. The VPHi acts as a catalyst to bring together a variety of stakeholders such as policy makers, science funding bodies, regulatory agencies, clinical organisations, and industry to maximise the benefit of medicine approaches for the healthcare industry and for the public good.

As Coordinating Institution, VPHi has overall responsibility for the progress of EDITH, steering the scientific and technical work performed to ensure that achieved results reflect the intended quality and objectives

LYNKEUS S.r.l. is an independent strategy and business consultancy company specialised on eHealth solutions. Lynkeus works to identify and promote the best cutting-edge technological solutions to complex socio-economic problems in a variety of areas related to technological applications in public policies, with a specific focus on healthcare. LYNKEUS provides a holistic approach including the following services: Innovation and Business Strategy; Project management; Blockchain development and implementation; Clinical decision support technologies; Analysis and implementation of Privacy Enhancing Technologies; Legal and ethical compliance; Dissemination and communication; Exploitation and business planning.

In EDITH, LYNKEUS provides Project Management and leads the activities on Ecosystem building, crowdsourcing knowledge discovery and consensus creation, plus contributing to analyse Sustainability issues and define the guidelines for a Code of Conduct.

ACC CYFRONET AGH (Akademia Górniczo Hutnicza) is a supercomputing centre which provides large-scale IT resources to institutions around the Kraków area, with particular focus on academic and research organizations. In addition to its role as an infrastructure provider, CYFRONET is also involved in collaborative research projects, both domestic and European. The Centre operates some of the fastest HPC clusters in Central Europe, and is affiliated with a number of similar institutions throughout Poland in the framework of the PL-Grid initiative.

In EDITH, ACC CYFRONET AGH is involved in the design and implementation of the simulation platform, along with its integration with the model repository. The Centre also works on operationalising early prototypes of the platform.

ATHENA (Athina-Erevnitiko Kentro Kainotomias Stis Technologies Tis Pliroforias, Ton Epikoinonion Kai Tis Gnosis) is a Research Center (RC) of scientific excellence in various fields of research. The vision of Athena RC is to serve the full spectrum of the research lifecycle, starting from basic and applied research, continuing on to system and product building and infrastructure service provision, and ending with technology transfer and entrepreneurship. Athena plays a major role in the Greek and European data infrastructure area with extensive expertise regarding the design, development and operation of data infrastructures in a broad range of subject areas. Its broad spectrum of research fields also includes those from other sciences, industrial applications, or societal challenges, such as informatics, data science, robotics, automation, signal processing, artificial intelligence, networking, and digital communication and modeling.

ATHENA is responsible for the technical design of both EDITH Repository and EDITH Platform, while it is leading the Simulation Platform.

BSC (Barcelona Supercomputing Center-Centro Nacional de Supercomputación) is a research centre hosting one of the largest EU High-Performance Computing (HPC) facilities. It coordinates ELIXIR-ES and the data pillar of the Spanish personalised medicine initiative, IMPACT.

BSC develops virtual twins of different mechanistic systems in collaboration with industry and academia, as well as climate simulations as part of the EU Destination Earth initiative. In the area of life sciences, BSC is building virtual twins of human organs and cellular systems in different EU-funded projects and coordinates the HPC centre of excellence in personalised medicine, PerMedCoE.

BSC is involved in several activities in EDITH: the development of two use-cases, in charge of part of the HPC infrastructure and in the development of efficient workflows for the EDITH platform.

DIGITALEUROPE AISBL, the leading trade association representing digitally transforming industries in Europe, stands for a regulatory environment that enables European businesses and citizens to prosper from digital technologies. With its members, DIGITALEUROPE shapes industrial policy positions on all relevant legislative matters and contributes to the development and implementation of relevant EU policies. Its members of over 45,000 businesses, operating and investing in Europe, include 100 corporations which are global leaders in their own field, and 41 national trade associations.

In EDITH, DIGITALEUROPE will coordinate the advice from industry and contribute to the analysis of the legal and regulatory environment, as well as the development of future business models and the sustainability of the EDITH platform.

EMPIRICA (Gesellschaft für Kommunikations- und Technologieforschung mbH) is a leading provider of research and consulting services on digital change and resulting policy formulation for governments, the EU and industry in the areas of Healthcare, Digital Health Research and Innovation, Smart Energy & Green Economy, Digital Economy and Society, Healthy Ageing, eSkills & Work, and Entrepreneurship.

EMPIRICA will contribute to EDITH with its expertise on policy, social and economic implications, defining the vision and roadmap of the Virtual Human Twin (VHT), and key issues pertaining to exploitation.

EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) is one of the Europe’s most cosmopolitan technical universities and welcomes students, professors, and collaborators of more than 120 nationalities.

EPFL has both a Swiss and international vocation and focuses on three missions: teaching, research, and innovation. It collaborates with an important network of partners, including other universities and

colleges, secondary schools and gymnasiums, industry and the economy, political circles, and the general public, with the aim of having a real impact on society. Nanolab-EPFL research is focusing on

novel electronic technologies for low power applications such as Internet of Things and Edge AI, encompassing sensing, computation and communications. 

 The role of Nanolab in EDITH is to contribute to certain use cases for Virtual Twins, exploiting sensing technologies and Data driven models, and network with the ongoing European Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) Proactive initiatives in Digital Twins in order to build a common European roadmap.

FORTH (Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas) established in 1983, is one of the largest research centres in Greece with well – organised facilities and highly qualified personnel with high impact research results. The work in EDITH by FORTH/BRI (Biomedical Research Institute) is undertaken by MedLab, the Unit of Medical Technology and Intelligent Information Systems, a highly innovative and self-contained research unit strongly activated in the fields of Biomedical Engineering and development of Intelligent Information systems.

FORTH is participating in EDITH, among other, in the: (i) Ecosystem building and crowdsourcing knowledge discovery, (ii) Creation of roadmap for accelerating uptake of VHT-based solutions, (iii) Simulation Platform development activities, and (iv) Design and implementation of EDITH sustainability strategy and exploitation opportunities.

HITS, the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies, was established in 2010 by physicist and SAP co-founder Klaus Tschira (1940-2015) and the Klaus Tschira Foundation as a private, non-profit research institute. HITS conducts basic research in the natural, mathematical, and computer sciences. Major research directions include complex simulations across scales, making sense of data, and enabling science via computational research. Application areas range molecular biology to astrophysics.  An essential characteristic of the Institute is interdisciplinarity, implemented in numerous cross-group and cross-disciplinary projects. The base funding of HITS is provided by the Klaus Tschira Foundation.

HITS contributes to EDITH’s development of a roadmap and vision for standardized Virtual Human Twins (VHTs), based its long-standing involvement in data management and standardization for life science and health data. The Scientific Databases and Visualization (SDBV) group of HITS brings in its involvement and leadership role in domain-specific standardization initiatives and ISO committees. HITS also provides the FAIRDOM SEEK platform as a use case for integrating existing data and model platforms into the EDITH infrastructure to be built. This will be a showcase for the generic interfacing of the EDITH infrastructure to other components.

INRIA (Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et Automatique) is the French national research institute for digital science and technology. World-class research, technological innovation and entrepreneurial risk are its DNA. In 215 projects, shared with major research universities, more than 3,900 researchers and engineers explore new paths in an interdisciplinary manner and in collaboration with industrial partners to meet ambitious challenges. As a technological institute, INRIA supports the diversity of innovation pathways: from open source software publishing to the creation of technological start-ups (Deeptech).

In EDITH, INRIA contributes to roadmapping, standards, and vision, based upon its expertise at digital twin modeling in liver and heart, in patient-specific surgery modeling, and in image-based model personalization, using models at various scales such as agent (cell)-based modeling and hemodynamics models.

JÜLICH (Forschungszentrum Jülich GMBH), one of Europe’s largest research centres,  makes a vital contribution to solve major challenges of the society in the fields of information, energy, and bioeconomy, focussing on: the future of information technologies and information processing, complex processes in the human brain, the transformation of the energy system, and a sustainable bioeconomy. JÜLICH develops simulation and data sciences as a key research method, makes use of large, often unique, scientific infrastructures, and exploits synergies between different research areas, spanning a diverse range of topics and disciplines.

JÜLICH contributes its expertise and computational resources to EDITH’s simulation platform, as well as a use case involving high-resolution modelling of the human brain.

PI SCHOOL is headquartered in Rome, Italy, within Pi Campus, an AI venture fund. It blends state-of-the-art technology with a startup mindset. Pi School trains AI specialists and provides Data Science and Deep Learning coaching services to teams in the industry, and carries out rapid prototyping actions to support AI project portfolios. For example,  as of Q4 2022, its flagship Pi School of AI programme has delivered 88 AI prototypes based on the most recent scientific advances.

In EDITH, Pi School works on economic aspects of Virtual Human Twins (VHTs) in view of the development of a viable ecosystem growing through technology transfer, from research to patients. Specifically, it leads the collection and analysis of a  portfolio of potential business models based on its entrepreneurial experience and the consortium’s industry network.

QMUL (Queen Mary University of London) has a long proud and distinctive history built on four historic institutions stretching back to 1785 and beyond: St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College, London Hospital Medical College, Westfield College, and Queen Mary College. Throughout its history, QMUL has fostered social justice and improved lives through academic excellence, bringing results across the globe. The research will be conducted in Queen Mary’s Digital Environment Research Institute, dedicated to multi-disciplinary research in digital and data science, and Barts Heart Centre, part of Barts Health NHS Trust.

In EDITH QMUL will develop an example use-case on cardiovascular modelling, and aid in connecting digital twin technologies to users, supported by the CardioVascular Devices Hub.

RWTH (Rhine-Westphalia Technical University of Aachen), University Hospital Aachen, as a maximum-care teaching hospital, bundles patient care, research and teaching under one roof facilitating intensive interdisciplinary dialogue and a dense clinical and scientific network. As a primary focus, University Hospital Aachen in the Computational Sciences ecosystem at RWTH Aachen drives Digital Medicine from the algorithm development up to implementation in patient care.

In EDITH, University Hospital Aachen will bring in its experience in the development of virtual patients as well as hybrid modelling integrating AI and physics based models for intensive care. Moreover, sustainability issues will be in the focus of their contributions as well.

ULIÈGE (University of Liège), a major public university of the French Community in Belgium, with roots in the middle ages. For two centuries ULIÈGE has interweaved its rich and abundant history with that of  Europe after the Treaty of Vienna and that of Belgium and its scientific, social and cultural, economic, and industrial destiny. ULIÈGE relies on 200 years of creation and transmission of knowledge, between international openness and regional engagement, with more than 5,000 people, involved in both basic  and  applied research.

ULIÈGE’s main contribution to EDITH is to participate in early prototyping by providing a use-case of a virtual twin for clinical trials and personalised treatment for glycemic control in intensive care.

UNIBO (Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna), keystone and point of reference for European culture, is considered to be the oldest university in the Western world. University of Bologna has a nine-centuries history, intertwined with that of some great names of science and literature. Dating back in 1088, conventionally referred to as the year of its foundation, it has passed through the bustling Middle Ages, the eclectic Renaissance, the stagnation of the Modern Age and its revival in the Contemporary Era.

In EDITH UNIBO will focus on the development of the federated cloud-based repository and will provide important contributions to the roadmapping and to other tasks related to the regulatory, ethical and legal aspects. The Bologna Biomechanical Computed Tomography (BBCT) digital twin methodology developed by UNIBO will also serve as a use-case for testing specific functionalities of the simulation platform.

UvA (Universiteit van Amsterdam) is an ambitious, creative, innovative, committed and independent university, working towards a sustainable and prosperous future; UvA is leader in international science and partner in innovation, inspiring generations since 1632. Interdisciplinary research, cooperation and innovation are keys to its scientific innovation.

The main role of UvA in EDITH is to contribute to the Virtual Human Twin (VHT) vision, roadmapping, and simulation platform.

VITO (Vlaamse Instelling Voor Technologisch Onderzoek) HEALTH is an independent Flemish research organisation developing innovative technological solutions for the diagnosis of diseases, the follow up of their treatment and to identify the triggers and trajectories of disease development. These solutions open the path for preventive health care, early detection of diseases, a more patient-oriented therapeutic treatment and a reduction of costs of the healthcare system.

In EDITH, VITO contributes to the vision of the virtual twins ecosystem and facilitates the secure, ethical and consent driven access to personal health data from a range of data resources.