SYNTHEMA project participation in recent scientific and policy events
The SYNTHEMA project has recently taken part in several scientific and policy-oriented events, reflecting its ongoing contribution to research on secure, privacy-preserving health data infrastructures. All activities took place in late 2025 and addressed federated learning, synthetic data, and trust in the use of health data.
Research paper presented at the Symposium on Federated Learning and Intelligent Computing Systems
In November 2025, the paper “Distributing trust: A P2P SMPC protocol for secure federated learning” was presented at the Symposium on Federated Learning and Intelligent Computing Systems, co-located with FLLM2025 and technically co-sponsored by the IEEE Austrian Section. The paper, authored by Petros Demetrakopoulos, Themistoklis Anagnostopoulos, and Sofia Tsekeridou, was scheduled in the FLLM RS-7 session on 27 November.
The authors are members of Netcompany RID, a SYNTHEMA consortium partner working on secure multi-party computation protocols for federated learning networks and federated anonymisation. Their contribution supports the integration and orchestration of deployments across distributed health data nodes within the federated learning ecosystem developed by the project.
SYNTHEMA represented at the European Institute for Innovation Through Health Data annual conference
On 3–4 December 2025, SYNTHEMA participated in the Annual Conference of the European Institute for Innovation Through Health Data, held in Ghent, Belgium. The project was represented by Elisabetta Mezzalira, Research Project Manager at the Università degli Studi di Padova.
The conference focused on developments shaping Europe’s health data landscape, including the European Health Data Space, data quality, privacy considerations, and the use of artificial intelligence in healthcare systems. The event also featured the presentation of the HealthData4EU white paper “Building Trust in Synthetic Health Data”, which examines shared methodological approaches and acceptance challenges related to the use of synthetic health data across cluster projects.
Contribution to the BDVA White Paper on Synthetic Data in Healthcare
SYNTHEMA also contributed to the BDVA – Big Data Value Association white paper on synthetic data in healthcare. Sofia Tsekeridou participated as lead co-editor and presented the publication during a webinar organised by BDVA and its Healthcare Task Force.
The presentation addressed the role of synthetic data in supporting clinical research on rare haematological diseases and its relevance for more inclusive healthcare practices. The webinar included an invited contribution from the European Commission’s DG CNECT Unit A.6 on Artificial Intelligence in Health and Life Sciences and was attended by more than 130 online participants.