A Modular, AI-Powered Toolbox for Healthcare Security

At the heart of the CYLCOMED project lies the CYLCOMED Toolbox, a modular set of AI-driven cybersecurity tools designed for clinical environments. The toolbox integrates secure identity management, data protection, access control, and advanced threat detection, and it can be deployed automatically across a wide range of medical devices.

Validated in both simulated and real hospital settings, the toolbox has demonstrated its adaptability and effectiveness. By combining cutting-edge technology with clinical workflows, CYLCOMED ensures that cybersecurity measures do not interfere with patient treatment or medical performance.

Assessing CYLCOMED Pilots

For Pilot 1, Spanish partner RGB Medical Devices, a manufacturer of patient monitoring systems, tested the toolbox in a simulated Intensive Care Unit using legacy equipment. The integration of CYLCOMED’s security modules via an external Linux-based board successfully protected devices such as multiparameter monitors and infusion pumps without affecting their clinical functions. The evaluation confirmed enhanced protection against unauthorized access and potential data breaches

For Pilot 2, the toolbox was further tested in real-world conditions at Ospedale Pediatrico Bambino Gesù in Rome and Fundación Hospital Infantil Universitario Niño Jesús in Madrid. In Rome, wearable devices for pediatric cardiac patients transmitted data securely through an AI-enabled platform, achieving strong patient compliance and system usability. Meanwhile, in Madrid, the CYLCOMED dashboard monitored 5G connections in emergency ambulances transporting critically ill children, ensuring safe and real-time data transmission.

Collaboration and Policy Engagement Shape the Future

CYLCOMED concluded with a final workshop involving related cluster projects and representatives from the Ministries of Health of Austria, Germany, Poland, and the Medical Chamber of Slovenia. The event emphasised EU-wide collaboration and highlighted shared strategies to safeguard healthcare infrastructures against cyber threats. Looking ahead, CYLCOMED demonstrates that robust cybersecurity can coexist with clinical excellence, paving the way for safer, more resilient digital health systems throughout Europe.

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Martel Innovate is a dynamic digital innovation agency with over 30 years of experience in driving sustainable digital transformation across Europe and beyond. With a team of 50+ experts and a track record of more than 200 successfully completed projects, Martel specialises in EU-funded project management, strategic communication, policy analysis, and the exploitation of ICT research and innovation outcomes.

Operating from three locations, Martel collaborates with industry leaders, SMEs, research institutions, and policy-makers to transform novel ideas into impactful technologies and strategies. In addition to project execution, Martel offers training and consultancy in areas such as Cloud and Edge Computing, IoT, AI, and Open-Source Software Engineering, as well as science communication and European funding programmes.

Martel Innovate in CYLCOMED

Within CYLCOMED, Martel leads the Work Package on Dissemination, Training & Exploitation, and Ecosystem Building. This role involves promoting the project to a broad audience, supporting the organisation of industry-facing events, implementing training activities to foster knowledge exchange, and ensuring the maximisation and visibility of project outcomes.

In addition to this leadership role, Martel contributes to several technical and strategic aspects of the project. This includes involvement in the development of the cybersecurity toolbox, particularly the C-OPA component, as well as participation in work related to the security dashboard and the integration of toolbox components. Martel also plays a role in other work packages, including supporting the legal and ethical evaluations, contributing to the analysis and enhancement of the cybersecurity baseline, and collaborating with partners to explore innovative solutions, such as adopting an Infrastructure-as-Code approach for managing devices and services across the cloud-to-edge continuum.

The Martel Innovate Team in CYLCOMED

Jean-Baptiste Milon

Senior Project Manager

Giada Martello 

Communication & Dissemination Specialist

Galileo Disperati

Design Team Leader

Andrea Falconi 

Software Developer

Gabriele Cerfoglio

Software Developer

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Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin is one of the largest university hospitals in Europe. Here, physicians and researchers work, heal, and teach at the highest international level. More than half of Germany’s Nobel Prize winners in Medicine and Physiology have come from Charité, including Emil von Behring, Robert Koch, and Paul Ehrlich. The university hospital is recognised worldwide as an outstanding institution for medical education.

Charité serves as the joint medical faculty of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Spread across four campuses, the Berlin university medical centre comprises more than 100 clinics and institutes, organised into 17 Charité Centers. With over 24,000 employees across the organisation, Charité is also one of the largest employers in the German capital.

Charité in CYLCOMED

Charité serves as the coordinator of the CYLCOMED project, overseeing the overall project management and ensuring that the consortium operates in line with the established governance structure and procedures to achieve its objectives. This includes project steering, quality assurance of deliverables, risk management, as well as financial and reporting responsibilities.

Beyond its coordinating role, Charité is actively involved in multiple aspects of the project, including legal and regulatory frameworks, risk analysis, development of the toolbox for Connected Medical Devices (CMDs), the security dashboard, and the design, implementation, and validation of pilot activities. Charité also contributes to the project’s communication, dissemination, and exploitation strategies.

The Charité Team in CYLCOMED

Dietmar Frey

Director CLAIM – Charité Lab for AI in Medicine bei Charité, CYLCOMED Project Coordinator

Jasmin Kopetzki 

Office Manager

Orhun Utku Aydin 

Medical Lead – Charité Lab for AI in Medicine, CYLCOMED Project Assistant 

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The workshop convened a diverse group of participants, including clinicians, researchers, IT specialists, legal experts, and representatives from health ministries and medical chambers from across Europe. Notable attendees included representatives from the Ministries of Health of Poland, Germany, and Austria, as well as members from the Medical Chamber of Slovenia and various European digital health initiatives.

The session was moderated by Ospedale Pediatrico Bambino Gesù (OPBG), represented by Dr. Alberto Tozzi, Head of Predictive and Preventive Medicine Research Unit, and Dr. Diana Ferro, Healthcare Research Officer and Executive Board Member of SIIAM (Italian Society of AI in Medicine), and opened with an engaging round of introductions. Projects represented included XiA, xShare, NEMECYS, Gravitate-Health, CYMEDSEC, and SECURED. In addition, a representative of HIMSS was also on site, providing the perspective of a major healthcare player, and sharing their priorities within the field.

The CYLCOMED team opened the session by presenting results from its toolbox validation across two pilots, with a focus on Pilot 2 led by OPBG. This was followed by a session on common challenges faced across projects and strategies to address them.

Discussions focused on several key topics at the intersection of healthcare and cybersecurity, including ethical and trustworthy health data sharing in the EU (highlighted by the xShare project); the development of training and credentialing for interoperability standards under the EU Health Data Space (XiA project), and the importance of standardisation and the current developments of the CYMEDSEC project, as youngest project among those represented.

Further contributions included legal and research insights into cybersecurity regulation by the Polish Ministry of Health, with expert input from KU Leuven; reflections on potential joint publications covering cybersecurity tools, documentation, and methodologies; a presentation by INOV (CYLCOMED) on risk management strategies, covering cyber threats, vulnerabilities, attacker-defender perspectives, and the complex challenges cybersecurity presents in healthcare systems.

The workshop concluded with a round table discussion, which led to several key takeaways:

• Urgent need for education and training in cybersecurity for healthcare professionals, with OPBG sharing their successful experience in organising training sessions for clinicians and researchers
• Greater EU-level recognition of the importance of cybersecurity in healthcare, including calls to better connect ministries of health with EU project outcomes
• Exploration of future research collaboration, particularly on topics such as AI in medical devices, patient data protection, and encryption
• Input into guidelines for AI-based tools in CMDs, using real-world use cases as best practices
• HIMSS expressed strong interest in supporting thought leadership and educational initiatives, stressing the importance of making EU project outcomes sustainable and exploitable beyond their funding period

The workshop not only fostered valuable cross-sector collaboration but also highlighted the shared commitment across EU projects to strengthen cybersecurity, interoperability, and trust in Europe’s digital healthcare ecosystem.

If you’d like to know more, the full-length recording of the workshop is available here below:

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At the heart of the discussions was the project’s flagship innovation: a comprehensive cybersecurity toolbox designed to enhance the digital resilience of hospitals while prioritising patient safety and trust. Partners explored the integration of the toolbox’s components, diving into topics such as anomaly detection, mitigation strategies, and real-world insights into how patients and healthcare professionals interacted with the technologies during deployment.

A key highlight of the meeting was the update on Pilot 1 and Pilot 2, which have served as testbeds for CYLCOMED’s solutions in clinical settings. These pilots provided crucial feedback on functionality, interoperability, and usability, helping to fine-tune the toolbox ahead of broader adoption.

Attention then shifted to regulatory and policy developments, including an overview of CYLCOMED’s alignment with the EU’s evolving action plan on cybersecurity in hospitals and healthcare providers. These efforts underscore the project’s contribution to shaping practical, policy-relevant solutions for one of the EU’s most critical infrastructure sectors.

The second day of the plenary featured focused sessions on standardisation and exploitation, two areas seen as strategic for ensuring the project’s sustainability and post-project impact. Partners explored how CYLCOMED’s results could support future industry standards and how they can be leveraged across healthcare systems.

As CYLCOMED enters its final months, the plenary served not only as a review of progress but also as a launchpad for final deliverables and joint preparation for the project’s final review. The consortium left Ljubljana with a clear roadmap, strengthened collaboration, and a shared commitment to delivering impactful, trustworthy cybersecurity tools tailored to Europe’s digital health landscape.

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INOV – Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores Inovação, is one of the largest Portuguese technological infrastructures in the field of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and Electronics. INOV dates back to 2001, after it proceeded with the strategic restructuring of INESC – Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores back to 1998. Today, it is a private non-profit institute whose mission is to transform knowledge into technology adding value to the innovation chain.

INOV’s activities focus on  R&D+I in Communication Networks, Cybersecurity, Artificial Intelligence, Enterprise Computing, Cyber-physical Systems and Remote Monitoring.  Since its inception, it participated in several R&D projects (over 120 co-funded), launched 2 spin-offs, and registered more than 20 patents.  As of 2020, it also boasts over 650 partners, and over 35 clients.

INOV in CYLCOMED

Within CYLCOMED, INOV explores the frontiers of available cybersecurity risk management frameworks and the use of new and emerging technologies. Its objective is to increase the overall understanding of cybersecurity risk management with an ever changing technological landscape, and to improve the overall cybersecurity within the healthcare sector. INOV is reponsible for the Risk Management Tool of CYLCOMED, cybersecurity skills trainings. It also contributes to several work packages, including legal and ethical, pilots implementation and toolbox integration, and dissemination among others.  

The INOV Team in CYLCOMED

Nelson Escravana

Director of Cybersecurity and Executive Board Member at INOV

Gonçalo Cadete, MsC 

GRC and Cybersecurity Consultant and Researcher at INOV Cybersecurity trainer|CISA®, CISM®, CRISC®|MBA| SACA

João Rodrigues, PhD 

GRC and Cybersecurity Consultant and Researcher at INOV, Governance and Resilience Business Unit 

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Ospedale Pediatrico Bambino Gesú (Bambino Gesù Pediatric Hospital) is a 607-bed tertiary care academic hospital located in the Lazio Region of Italy. Recognized as a Scientific Institute for Research, Hospitalization, and Health Care (IRCCS), it serves as Italy’s leading pediatric hospital, delivering advanced healthcare services for children alongside robust basic, clinical, and translational research programs.

As part of the Italian National Healthcare System, Bambino Gesù is widely acknowledged as a national and international referral center for all pediatric specialties. The hospital employs nearly 3,600 staff members, including physicians, researchers, nurses, clinical technicians, and administrative personnel. Each year, it delivers more than 2 million healthcare services to children and adolescents from across the globe.

The hospital also plays a vital role in rare and complex disease care, actively participating in 20 of the 24 European Reference Networks (ERNs) aimed at improving diagnosis and treatment for patients with rare conditions.

OPBG in CYLCOMED

The Bambino Gesù Pediatric Hospital plays a vital role in the CYLCOMED project as one of its clinical partners. Specifically, its contribution focuses on integrating CYLCOMED technology into the clinical management of high-risk pediatric patients, particularly those with heart failure and complex congenital heart diseases.

These patients are enrolled in a dedicated program within the Advanced Cardiovascular Therapies Unit, which follows over 500 patients annually, including more than 150 post-transplant patients and those supported by ventricular assist devices. As part of the project, a specific protocol, CYLCOMED-Heart, has been developed to support the validation of the entire system. This protocol enables a comprehensive, multidimensional analysis and represents a unique translational model bridging clinical practice with advanced technological tools.

The OPBG Team in CYLCOMED

Alberto E. Tozzi

Head of Predictive and Preventive Medicine Research Unit , MD

Rachele Adorisio

Advanced Cardiovascular Therapies Unit, Director and Principal Investigator, MD, MSc 

Elena Cavarretta

Advanced Cardiovascular Therapies Unit, MD, PhD

Lucrezia Libbi

Advanced Cardiovascular Therapies Unit, DR, CCT

Diana Ferro

Predictive and Preventive Medicine Research Unit, DR, PhD, ABAIM

Ginevra Campia

Predictive and Preventive Medicine Research Unit, DR 

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XLAB is a global SME specializing in IT solutions, with a strong focus on hybrid infrastructure management and automation, cybersecurity and privacy, IoT, and data analytics. XLAB participated in over 80 research projects (more than 50 European and 30 national), and has a proven track record of translating research outcomes into successful products. One notable example is Steampunk Spotter, which originated from the H2020 projects SODALITE and PIACERE.

XLAB’s success in product development is backed by its ability to build robust business infrastructure around exploitable research results. Noteworthy examples include:

• ISL Online – a premium remote desktop solution
• Steampunk – a trusted Red Hat partner providing unified hybrid infrastructure automation
• Gaea+ – a customizable 3D visualisation platform recognised by NASA
• MedicView – a 3D imaging solution for dental and radiological applications

XLAB in CYLCOMED

XLAB acts a key technological partner and brings expertise in cybersecurity and AI. It contributes with a LOMOS technology that harnesses the state-of-the-art Natural Language Processing (NLP) architectures to detect anomalies in system and application logs that could indicate a security threat.  

The XLAB Team in CYLCOMED

Hrvoje Ratkajec

PhD, Research Project Manager

Justin Činkelj

PhD, Researcher and Engineer 

Anja Božič

Junior research project manager

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From 11 to 12 June 2025, the CYLCOMED project took part in the prestigious Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Europe Conference, hosted at the Palais des Congrès in Paris, France. HIMSS is one of Europe’s largest and most influential events dedicated to digital health, bringing together policymakers, innovators, and healthcare professionals from across the globe. This year’s conference emphasised the importance of leveraging technology to enhance outcomes for patients and healthcare systems alike; a mission fully aligned with CYLCOMED’s vision.

EU Project Pavilion: sharing our mission with the community

CYLCOMED was showcased as part of the EU Projects Pavilion, alongside other cutting-edge EU-funded initiatives. The project drew attention from various stakeholders including healthcare companies, contributing to broader awareness of its ongoing work in the field of explainable and secure AI for healthcare.

Ospedale Pediatrico Bambino Gesú (OPBG) at HIMSS EU projects workshop

Project partner Ospedale Pediatrico Bambino Gesù (OPBG) was represented by Dr. Diana Ferro, Healthcare Research Officer and Executive Board Member of SIIAM (Italian Society of AI in Medicine). On 11 June at 15:45, Ms. Ferro joined 11 other EU projects for a joint panel session titled “Value Co-Creation in Healthcare: Enhancing Socio-Economic Outcomes” . Dr. Ferro presented the two pilots OPBG is involved in, the advancements of our cybersecurity toolbox, and stressed the multidisciplinarity of our consortium; a key strength of CYLCOMED. This discussion explored how EU-funded research is driving real-world change and sustainable impact in the healthcare domain, and saw the presence of EU reviewers who listened carefully to the projects and mentioned the importance of leveraging existing assets and collaboration.

Looking ahead

CYLCOMED’s presence at HIMSS 2025 marked another step forward in boosting the cybersecurity of connected medical devices. The project remains committed to providing cybersecure solutions that meet real clinical needs while upholding ethical and regulatory standards.

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MediaClinics Italia is an innovative SME with high technological content, operating in the telemedicine and eHealth sector. Since 2020, it has been certified as a Medical Device Manufacturer in compliance with MDR requirements and the ISO 13485 standard. Its commercial offering includes the proprietary monitoring platform MHP and the electronic medical record for Intensive Care Units MargheritaTre. The MCI team boasts proven experience in implementing research projects at regional (Smart Living 4 All, SCC Hub), national (Smartaging), and European (PAPAYA, CYLCOMED) levels in the field of new healthcare technologies.

MediaClinics Italia in CYLCOMED

Being an expert MD manufacturer allows MCI to be the connecting point between clinical needs and technical partners point of view. MCI is also providing a certified medical device into the project, which is MHP; this is the perfect connection point being MHP a SaMD – Software as Medical Device (MDR) – and representing the ideal condition to test the toolbox integration and implementation. MHP is being exploited in Pilot 2 where it is used as a telemonitoring system.

The MediaClinics Italia Team in CYLCOMED

Marco Mosconi

CTO – Researcher and Engineer 

Diego Cappelletti

Software Developer

Giuseppe Dallapè

Software Developer

Andrea Scaburri

Researcher and Engineer

Simone Favrin

PhD, Project manager

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