Picking up the conversation: VALUEMAP moves from idea to action
In early 2025, a group of organisations from across Europe started talking about a problem they were all facing: how can the ambitions of the European Health Data Space be translated into practical, sustainable ways of creating value from the secondary use of health data?
That conversation began within a Special Interest Group under the EIT Health Partner Forum. Twelve organisations from seven countries joined it, bringing perspectives from healthcare, industry, public authorities, technology and ecosystem development. What started as an exchange around a shared challenge gradually became something more concrete.
Today, that work has become VALUEMAP, a new 18-month Horizon Europe Coordination and Support Action led by InnoStars. Its aim is to help European health data ecosystems move from fragmented approaches towards practical models that can work across different national and regional settings.
And there is another thread connecting the beginning of that conversation with what comes next. Inês Matias, who supported shaping the original Special Interest Group and worked on the VALUEMAP proposal, has returned to InnoStars to manage the project she helped create. For her, the return comes with a sense of continuity.
“There is something very special about coming back to a project whose first steps you remember so clearly. I was involved when the idea was still taking shape, helped develop the proposal, and now I have the chance to see that work turn into something real. It feels a little like returning to where it all started and seeing what has grown from those first conversations.”
From health data ambition to something people can actually use
VALUEMAP focuses on a question that is becoming increasingly important across Europe. The European Health Data Space creates new possibilities for the safe and secure use of health data for research, innovation and decision-making. But the framework itself does not answer every practical question about how organisations should work together, how value should be shared, or which models can remain sustainable over time. This is where VALUEMAP comes in.
The project will first look at existing and emerging approaches to the secondary use of health data across Europe. Partners will combine desk research with a European survey, interviews and regional roundtables to understand what is already working, where organisations are getting stuck and how different national settings affect implementation. The findings will then be turned into two main outputs: a multi-annual Joint Action Plan and a European collection of Best Practices & Toolkits. The idea is not to create another theoretical report, but rather practical material that organisations can adapt to their own circumstances.
The project will bring together people who rarely see the problem from exactly the same angle: healthcare providers and data owners, researchers, start-ups, industry, regulators, technology providers, public authorities and patient organisations. That mix is essential. Decisions about the use of health data are unlikely to work in practice if they are designed by only one part of the system.
InnoStars is coordinating the work
For InnoStars, VALUEMAP is not simply another project in the portfolio. InnoStars is the project coordinator and leads the management and coordination work package. It is responsible for keeping the consortium aligned, monitoring progress, overseeing quality and risk management and making sure the work moves forward across the full 18 months. But coordination here also means bringing people together.
The proposal gives InnoStars a clear role in connecting the different communities involved in VALUEMAP and creating space for constructive discussion between them. Particular attention will be paid to making sure that different regions and under represented stakeholders are part of that conversation. This is familiar ground for InnoStars. Its previous work around the European Health Data Space has included stakeholder engagement, national roundtables and analysis across several European ecosystems, including Portugal, Hungary, Poland and Italy. Also Morning Health Talk epizode around this topis was organised in Serbia. VALUEMAP takes that experience further.
Instead of looking at individual national challenges in isolation, the project will compare what is happening across different ecosystems, identify what can be transferred from one region to another and create a shared basis for future cooperation.
“VALUEMAP started with organisations recognising that they were facingthe same challenges,” says Inês. “Now we can take that conversation further, learn from different European ecosystems and turn that knowledge into something practical that others can actually use.”
The conversation continues
VALUEMAP is now officially under way following its online kick-off meeting. The next step will bring the consortium together in person in Budapest in October, where partners will work on the first implementation priorities and start moving from planning into delivery.
For InnoStars, VALUEMAP opens a new chapter in its work around health data in Europe. For Inês, it is also a return to something familiar: a conversation she helped start, now ready to become something much more concrete.
More about the project HERE