April 10, 2026 — As artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities increase, one of the issues that is hindering progress is the ability of AI to integrate multiple data types from various sources (multimodal data) to develop personalized interventions. For example, how to combine highly detailed genomic data with cardiology imaging and other data (text, audio, sensor data) from multiple sources into a secure "digital fabric" — a unified system to improve analytical accuracy, robustness, and depth that can be used to train the next generation of AI models.
The European Union’s NextGen project is developing tools to remove barriers in multimodal data integration, which is complex due to privacy and governance requirements, the presence of multiple standards, distinct data formats, and underlying data complexity and volume. The project has been designed for interventions specifically for cardiology.
NextGen tools will ensure health data remains meaningful and "readable" across different borders and hospital systems without losing its original clinical context, and allows researchers to discover relevant cardiovascular datasets without moving or exposing sensitive patient information. Especially relevant is the ability of NextGen to integrate genomic data, which is both personal to the patient and highly complex. Recently, the price of genomic sequencing has fallen substantially, meaning it can be used in the development of medical interventions with the help of AI. The tools created will also ‘shift power’ to the participants, by hard-coding the appropriate ethical constraints and governance into how the data interacts within the network.
The NextGen tools developed are aligned with ongoing initiatives, including “1+ Million Genomes” — a project aiming to enable secure access to genomic and corresponding clinical data across Europe, supporting research, health policy and personalized healthcare.
This work also directly supports the European Health Data Space (EHDS) framework. EHDS aims to create a secure, unified system for health data exchange across the EU, fostering innovation, improving healthcare delivery, and strengthening Europe’s global leadership in digital health.
Several real-world pilots will demonstrate the effectiveness of the NextGen tools and will be integrated into the NextGen Pathfinder network of five collaborating clinical sites as a self-contained data ecosystem and comprehensive proof of concept.
Prof. Steffen Petersen, Queen Mary University of London, and ESC volunteer said, “Clinicians rely on a wide range of clinical information to diagnose disease, predict risk, guide treatment and monitor outcomes. However, health data science has not yet fully captured the power of multimodal data such as symptoms, signs, electrocardiograms, blood tests, and imaging. Bringing these data together is crucial for advancing data-enabled innovation in healthcare, and NextGen represents a major step forward.”
Find out more information about NextGen at www.nextgentools.eu
October 21, 2025 
