ICT is the key European event dedicated to networking and promoting research and innovation in the field of Information and Communication Technologies, focusing on the European Union’s priorities in the digital transformation of society and industry, and represents an opportunity for the people involved in this transformation to share their experience and vision of Europe in the digital age. The 2018 edition, ICT 2018: Imagine Digital – Connect Europe, will take place in Vienna on 4-6 December 2018, mostly dealing with the Horizon 2020 Work Programme 2018-20, including ICT calls across all three pillars of Horizon 2020.

The event, organised by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology in cooperation with the Austrian Presidency, will have the following main components:

• a conference on digital research and innovation policies,
• an exhibition of EU-funded research and innovation projects in the field of ICT,
• a series of networking activities,
• an innovation and startups village to showcase European entrepreneurship.

Among these, ICT 2018 is hosting, under the theme “Inspiring a Digital Society”, an MHMD-dedicated exhibition entitled “Taking back control of your health data” exploring the MHMD model, its architecture, interface and use cases for healthcare organisations, research and innovation centres and individual users.

Also, the Project Coordinator (Lynkeus) and other partners of the Consortium will be involved in three networking sessions:

• Blockchain applications in healthcare data management and exchange (Room M1, 5 December, 10:00-10:45), focusing on the potential of having recourse to blockchain solutions in healthcare for the management and exchange of electronic health records, thanks to its capability of establishing trust with privacy, accountability, traceability, transparency, and integrity of data; the session will discuss key challenges and opportunities, from the integration of blockchain solutions with existing (legacy) IT systems to the combination with other technologies, to the implementation of possible solutions to data interoperability issues, also including new models of governance and of identity provision and management and criticisms – particularly in relation to alleged incompatibilities between blockchain technologies and the GDPR – and proposed solutions;
• Secure genomic data sharing with encryption-based privacy-preserving tools (Room 2.95, 6 December, 11:30-12:15), exploring different types of privacy-preserving (PP) methods needed for limiting the amount of data being disclosed to third parties, either by using partial homomorphic encryption or remote non-disclosing analysis methods, or by having recourse to secure multi-party computation (SMC), and how such PP tools can help to minimise the risk of information leakage while maximising data value to improve patients’ health;
• Realizing the promise of in-silico medicine. Challenges and opportunities (Room 2.44, 5 December, 17:30-18:15), dedicated to technologies that have the potential to optimize both the quality and efficiency of healthcare services, such as big data applications and disease models, which have shown their ability to predict clinical states and suggest most effective and safe care pathways to physicians; the goal of the session is to describe in depth and discuss outstanding challenges documented by years of applied research and collectively analyse potential solutions proposed by different stakeholders, organizational and institutional limits and opportunities, including enabling factors in technology adoption, patient’s opinions and concerns, economic barriers for technology developers and the challenge of clinical validation of technologies in real-world care.

ICT 2018 will offer an exceptional occasion to build quality partnerships as it will connect academia, research institutes, industrial stakeholders, SMEs and government actors from all over Europe. The event is free of charge but registration is required.