IDERHA’s first ‘working meeting’ in Seville

It was the first face-to-face meeting since the kick-off in April, and our project leads Philip Gribbon and Christian Muehlendyck stressed beforehand that this was a ‘working meeting’, stimulating the participants to actively engage in discussions on how to move forward with the project.

The two-day meeting was a great success and exceeded our expectations about, among others, the number of participants. Not even a closed airport could prevent our Hamburg-based colleagues to come to Seville. Over 60 people, much more than only the Steering Committee, joined the four interactive sessions on data types and flows, the legal framework, matching the technical part with the policy part, and the sustainability strategy. 

Perhaps even more importantly, during the guided city tour, the excellent dinner on Monday night, and the many informal gatherings, new connections were made, ideas were exchanged, and relationships were strengthened. For some, there was even time left on Tuesday afternoon to relax and visit beautiful Seville. 

Although we appreciate the great challenges we face, there was a lot of ambition and optimism after two days in Seville: ‘IDERHA’s platform, tools, and insights have the potential to help shape the future of health data use and reuse in the EU’, Phil and Christian concluded.

We thank Kiko Núñez and the IBiS Instituto de Biomedicina de Sevilla for their warm hospitality and excellent meeting organization.