The project is building the Common Ground for cooperation in healthcare
In its early phase, HERACLES is defining shared priorities and building the conditions for stronger collaboration between research, healthcare and business around future innovation pathways.
Not every project milestone is immediately visible from the outside. After the Kick-off Meeting, HERACLES focused its first phase of work on building the common ground needed to support future cooperation among partners from research, healthcare and business. This means aligning perspectives, identifying shared priorities and preparing the basis for a transnational collaboration that can connect different competences around healthcare innovation. HERACLES aims to strengthen the link between academia and enterprises, support the uptake of advanced technologies and foster the development of AI-driven solutions that respond to common healthcare challenges across the Mediterranean area.
At the same time, AI in healthcare is still surrounded by hype, oversimplifications and common misconceptions. It is often described as something automatic, self-sufficient or even capable of replacing professional expertise. In reality, healthcare tells a different story. The value of AI depends on the quality of the data behind it, on how systems are designed and validated, on clear safeguards and rules, and on continuous human oversight. Just as importantly, it depends on whether these tools address real clinical, organisational and service needs. This is why HERACLES does not look at AI as an abstract trend or a purely technological issue, but as a field that needs to be understood, interpreted and connected to practice through dialogue between different professional perspectives.
This perspective is also reflected in the project’s communication efforts, which are gradually introducing the public to the meaning, potential and limits of AI in healthcare in a clear and accessible way.
For this reason, collaboration comes before solutions. HERACLES is built on the idea that meaningful innovation in healthcare cannot emerge from one sector alone. Researchers contribute scientific knowledge, healthcare professionals bring practical understanding of real settings and needs, while enterprises and innovation actors help create the conditions for results to become applicable, scalable and sustainable. Bringing these perspectives together is not only a project method: it is part of the value HERACLES aims to generate.
This broader vision is already beginning to take shape through the project’s first technical exchanges. Early discussions have started to outline the architecture of the future collaborative platform and the direction of the demonstrator that will support its validation. Partners have reflected on issues such as usability, stakeholder needs, real-world applicability and the importance of choosing approaches that healthcare contexts can realistically understand and test. While the technical work is still evolving, these first steps already point towards a practical and collaborative model of innovation.
This initial phase is laying the groundwork for what comes next: building bridges between research, healthcare and business, promoting a more grounded understanding of AI in healthcare, and creating the conditions for solutions that can be relevant, credible and useful across different territories. The coming months will be decisive in turning this shared direction into more concrete and technical developments.
Last Update
16/04/2026
Next Med