Get to know the exhibitors at EGI2026 in this series of interviews, and meet us in Ghent, Belgium from 21-25 September 2026! Today, we spotlight Sciensano and their shared booth.

Can you explain what your organisation does?

Sciensano is Belgium’s public health institute. Its mission is to transform health data and scientific evidence into knowledge that supports public health policy, scientific advancement and health system improvement. Sciensano works across public health domains including epidemiology, surveillance, data management, biosafety, diagnostics, and health information systems.

In the context of the European Health Data Space (EHDS), Sciensano contributes to the development of practical, interoperable and FAIR-aligned solutions for health data discovery, reuse and governance. This includes work on HealthDCAT-AP, metadata catalogues, data quality and utility, secure processing environments, synthetic data, and AI-supported approaches for making health datasets more findable, understandable and usable.

What is the relationship with EGI?

Sciensano’s work is strongly aligned with EGI’s role in supporting federated, secure and FAIR data infrastructures. Within its AI and Data innovation agenda, Sciensano aims to contribute to European initiatives such as the EHDS, EOSC and EGI, particularly around federated and FAIR-aligned data architectures.

At EGI2026, Sciensano will present practical work showing how health data infrastructures can move from policy and standards to operational implementation. This includes tools for metadata creation, sandbox catalogues, secure data processing, and AI-augmented approaches that support research workflows while respecting governance, security and interoperability requirements.

Why is it important to be at EGI2026?

EGI2026 is an important opportunity for Sciensano to engage with the European research infrastructure community and demonstrate how public health organisations can contribute to the practical implementation of the EHDS.

The EHDS requires more than regulation alone: it requires usable tools, trusted infrastructures, interoperable metadata, and operational workflows that can support data holders, Health Data Access Bodies, researchers and infrastructure providers. Sciensano’s presence at EGI2026 will show how these elements can be combined in practice.

The conference is also an opportunity to exchange with infrastructure providers, data space actors and research communities on key implementation challenges, including metadata standardisation, secure processing environments, federated discovery, synthetic proxy data, and the role of AI in improving data findability and reuse.

What can people expect when visiting your booth or attending your workshops?

Visitors can expect a practical demonstration of Sciensano’s HealthDCAT-AP Roadshow. The Roadshow presents how standardised metadata can support EHDS implementation, with a specific focus on HealthDCAT-AP, metadata management infrastructure, and tools for data holders.

The booth will include posters, flyers and live demonstrations. Participants will be able to see the HealthDCAT-AP Editor, a user-friendly tool that helps data holders create HealthDCAT-AP-compliant metadata without needing technical expertise in RDF or semantic web technologies. They will also be able to see a sandbox metadata catalogue, where metadata records produced through the editor can be stored, visualised and tested.

In addition, the Roadshow connects metadata creation with Sciensano’s broader work on data quality and organisational readiness, including the QUANTUM project. QUANTUM focuses on the assessment of dataset quality and utility, as well as the maturity of data holders. This allows the Roadshow to cover not only metadata production, but also how datasets and organisations can be assessed and improved to support reuse.

Delegates can expect concrete examples, discussion of EHDS implementation needs, and demonstrations of how metadata, data quality, secure processing and AI-supported discovery can work together in a realistic health data infrastructure.

Can delegates see your organisation in other sessions, demonstrations, workshops or posters?

Yes. Sciensano has three contributions to EGI2026, subject to final programme confirmation.

The first contribution focuses on HealthDCAT-AP in the EHDS and presents the HealthDCAT-AP Editor as a practical tool for data holders. It demonstrates how metadata can be created through an intuitive interface, validated, exported in RDF serialisations, and published to a sandbox catalogue for immediate review.

The second contribution focuses on Secure Processing Environments for secondary use of health data. It discusses how SPEs can support privacy-by-design, identity management, audit logging, output checking, and trusted access to sensitive health data within the EHDS.

The third contribution presents ongoing work on a Generative AI-augmented health dataset catalogue developed in the SHAIPED project. This demonstrator explores how natural-language research questions can be translated into virtual dataset blueprints, linked to relevant metadata, and supported by synthetic proxy data for early feasibility assessment and research preparation.

Together, these contributions show Sciensano’s work across the full pathway from metadata creation and dataset discovery to secure processing, AI-supported research preparation, data quality and EHDS-aligned infrastructure implementation.