Ten years of European health data collaboration, brought together in one story i~HD

The European Institute for Innovation through Health Data (i~HD) is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to enabling the optimal use of health data through a range of complementary activities.

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Cover i-HD

The challenge

Ten years after its founding, i~HD had built an impressive European track record, spanning dozens of projects, hundreds of partners, multiple workstreams and a rapidly evolving health data policy landscape.

That wealth of expertise also made communication complex: how do you bring together technical, multinational and policy-driven expertise into one coherent story that resonates with policymakers, hospitals, researchers and industry alike?

The challenge was not to catalogue everything i~HD had achieved, but to structure ten years of impact in a clear and compelling way, while showing why i~HD remains a relevant and trusted partner for the decade ahead.

Expertise that connects Our approach

Starting from that central question, we developed a strategic narrative around four clear perspectives.

From timeline to meaning

The original material spanned years of project names, conferences, milestones and policy themes. We transformed that information into a story of evolving priorities.

From electronic health records for clinical research and data quality to AI ethics, synthetic data and the European Health Data Space, the timeline shows not only what happened, but how the challenges surrounding health data in Europe have evolved.

Instead of becoming an archive of past activities, the chronology became a way to demonstrate the evolution of the European health data ecosystem and i~HD’s role within it.

From workstreams to value

Technical expertise becomes meaningful when people understand what it enables.

That is why we reframed i~HD’s different areas of expertise not only in terms of their technical scope, but also in terms of the value they create for patients, healthcare professionals, researchers, hospitals and industry.

Data quality became more than a methodology. Information governance became more than regulation. Interoperability became more than standards.

Each area was given a clear role within a broader narrative about making health data trustworthy, reusable and fit for purpose.

From numbers to evidence

Trust, collaboration and European impact are easy to claim. We therefore made the results of ten years of work explicit and highly visible.

Ten years of i~HD in numbers

  • 623 collaborating partners
  • 42 countries
  • 89 peer-reviewed publications
  • 370+ keynotes, speakers and panel contributions
  • 30+ roundtables organised
  • 30+ European projects
  • 10 years of continuous activity

These figures were deliberately given a prominent place in the publication. Not as an appendix, but as tangible evidence supporting the wider narrative.

From the past to the horizon

An anniversary publication should not feel like an endpoint.

That is why A Decade of Trust in Health Data does not end with the achievements of the past ten years. It looks ahead to the implementation of the European Health Data Space, the continued development of the i~HD Academy and a portfolio of ongoing and future European projects.

Ten years of activity therefore become not only an opportunity to look back, but also a foundation for the next phase of i~HD’s journey.

What the results show Results

By structuring ten years of projects, data, expertise and policy developments around evolution, value, evidence and the future, we created a strategic narrative framework that i~HD can continue to use across future communications.

This is where Living Stone adds value for complex, knowledge-intensive organisations. Not by simplifying expertise until it loses its meaning, but by identifying what matters, revealing how different elements connect and turning that complexity into one coherent story that different audiences can understand.

i~HD brought ten years of European expertise, project knowledge and collaboration. Living Stone translated that wealth of content into one coherent whole: from the overarching concept and narrative structure to copywriting and the complete editorial design of the publication.