DataTools4Heart at the ESC Congress 2025
Held together with the World Congress of Cardiology, the European Society of Cardiology Congress 2025 (Madrid, 29 August – 01 September), united knowledge, innovation, and expertise across diverse community worldwide. This congress focused on Global Health, highlighting cardiology without borders and the impact of cardiovascular disease on health systems. Discussions addressed emerging challenges, identified new opportunities, and explored health disparities, while showing advances in treatment and strategies adaptable to healthcare environments.
On the first day, DataTools4Heart took centre on the ESC TV stage in the session “DataTools4Heart in action: Towards global, trustworthy and interoperable AI in cardiology” chaired by Nico Bruining (Erasmus MC) with contributions from Cristian Izquierdo Morcillo, Xenia Puig (University of Barcelona) and Machteld Johanna Boonstra (Amsterdam University Medical Centre). In addition to presenting the DataTools4Heart technical framework and explaining how it aligns with the FUTURE-AI principles, the presentation highlighted the main challenges in reusing clinical data, including privacy concerns, unstructured data, missing and noisy datasets, heterogeneous formats and languages, and issues of fairness and bias.
On the second day, as part of the joint EU-funded Horizon Europe projects AI4HF and NextGen, the scientific session “Artificial intelligence tools to improve personalized medicine: a basic introduction for cardiologists with lessons learned from three EU projects”, chaired by Machteld Johanna Boonstra and Karim Lekadir (University of Barcelona), with presentations by Cristian Izquierdo Morcillo, Ali Anil Sinaci (SRDC, Software, Research and Development Consultancy) and Daniele Malpetti (SUPSI, Scuola Universitaria Professionale della Svizzera Italiana), brought together experts bridging the gap between AI innovation and clinical practice.
This was an opportunity to show how the AI tools developed in these EU Horizon projects can support cardiologists in advancing personalised medicine by turning complex methods into practical applications. The discussion emphasised the importance of filling the gap between technological innovation and clinical application and ensuring that research results meet the practical needs of cardiology. Audience participation with questions on ethical and technical aspects emphasised the importance of multidisciplinary collaboration in the design of clinically relevant AI solutions.
The presentation of DataTools4Heart’s work and results during the ESC Congress 2025 provided an opportunity to showcase the progress of the project, engage with the wider cardiology and research community and look forward to shared contributions for the future.
Do not miss the ESC TV stage DataTools4Heart’s recording!