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UNIVIE represented COMMUTE at the 2025 Symposium of Health, Law, and Technology (HELT)

On April 24, the 2025 Symposium of Health, Law and Technology (HELT) took place in Brussels, Belgium.

This year’s theme –“One Health: Advancing Global Health through Law and Technology” ̶ brought together legal professionals, industry leaders, patient advocates, policymakers, and regulatory experts from diverse sectors to explore contributions to the topic from legal, technological and ethical perspectives.

Rodessa May Marquez and Alexandra Marginean from the Department of Innovation and Digitalisation in Law at the University of Vienna attended the HELT symposium as representatives of the COMMUTE (Comorbidity Mechanisms Utilized in Healthcare) project. They organized a workshop together with two other projects BBMRI.at (Biobanking and BioMolecular resources Research Infrastructure Austria) and SYNTHIA (Synthetic Data Generation framework for integrated validation of use cases and AI healthcare applications).

The workshop examined how emerging technologies in AI and Big Data Analytics can be harnessed to improve disease surveillance in a legally and ethically responsible manner.

In the first part of the workshop, participants were invited to reflect on a word or phrase they associate with the use of AI in disease surveillance, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. These associations were later categorized as positive, negative, or neutral, leading to a lively discussion around the perceived risks and opportunities of integrating AI into public health infrastructure.

The second part of the workshop focused on the tension between the right to information and the ethical principle of non-maleficence. Participants were encouraged to consider a patient-centered perspective in evaluating the ethical implications of AI-driven recommender systems, particularly those capable of predicting an individual's likelihood of developing neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. The discussion highlighted the importance of informed patient choice, the need for clear thresholds before disclosing such information, and the role of preventive strategies. Additionally, the discussion has also raised a critical question, namely: to what extent should such information be shared with next of kin when patients opt not to be informed?

The workshop concluded with a brief presentation of the discussion outcomes by representatives from all three projects.

This edition of the COMMUTE Quarterly Bulletin highlights the work of Work Package 2 (WP2), which focuses on data management and knowledge graph analysis. WP2 plays a key role in identifying shared causal mechanisms among COVID-19 and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. It integrates diverse data sources – including electronic health records, lab experiments, environmental data, and scientific literature – into fully queryable knowledge graphs that reveal patterns and relationships between diseases. A major outcome of WP2 is the COMMUTE Evidence Base, a platform that organizes this data and supports data-driven approaches in the Data Science and AI work package (WP3).

Read the third bulletin (March 2025) here as PDF

Members of the COMMUTE project convened at the Barcelonaβeta Brain Research Center (BBRC), part of the Pasqual Maragall Foundation, for a Datathon. This collaborative initiative aimed to promote interdisciplinary teamwork between researchers in clinical and cellular sciences and experts in AI and data sciences. During the hands-on workshop held on February 3-4, 2025, participants explored how data-driven and hypothesis-driven approaches can be integrated to investigate the risk of neurodegenerative disease comorbidities associated with COVID-19 infection. The event was organized by BBRC, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS), and Fraunhofer SCAI.

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Nikolaus Forgó and his team from the Department of Innovation and Digitalisation in Law led an engaging COMMUTE General Assembly Meeting held on November 12-13, 2024, at the University of Vienna. The first day showcased compelling work package presentations and lively discussions among participants. The second day featured insightful talks from Supervisory Board members, a dynamic panel discussion with the Legal and Ethics Advisory Board (LEAB) and Patient-Interest Stakeholders, as well as a collaborative workshop that fostered meaningful interactions. This event created an excellent platform for attendees to connect, exchange ideas, and share valuable insights.

Legal and Ethical Advisory Board (LEAB) workshop

On November 13, 2024, the University of Vienna hosted a panel discussion and workshop as part of the D5.2 report for the COMMUTE project. This event aimed to gather insights for recommendations on the ethical and practical implications of AI/ML in patient care. Moderated by Univ.-Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Forgó, the panel featured experts, including Joachim Maurice Mielert, Prof. Dr. Martin Hofmann-Apitius, Prof. Dr. Sarah Baumeister, and Constanze Hübner. The discussion, which was live-streamed on YouTube, addressed challenges related to predictive medicine, patient rights, and the ethical deployment of AI technologies in healthcare, particularly in light of COVID-19's impact on conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. The workshop also aimed to engage stakeholders to better understand patients’ expectations and needs.

Panel discussion

Work Package 3 of the COMMUTE project bundles all activities of partners with expertise in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. The focus lies on applying existing Data Science and AI methods to find patterns and signals that represent causal and mechanistically interpretable causal relationships. The resulting AI models will allow for the assessment of the personal risk of developing neurodegenerative diseases after a SARS-CoV-2 infection. This bulletin introduces both the COMMUTE data catalog, a comprehensive and searchable index of the multimodal data used in WP3 with harmonized, rich metadata, and the teams along with their expertise that contribute to WP3.

Read the second bulletin (October 2024) here as PDF

The COMMUTE project investigates the link between COVID-19 and neurodegenerative diseases and includes five work packages. WP1 handles project management, communication, and dissemination of results. WP2 creates and integrates knowledge graphs and manages data. WP3 uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to model the risks of neurodegenerative diseases. WP4 focuses on clinical research and in vitro models to study the mechanisms. Brain organoids and blood-brain barrier models are used. WP5 addresses ethical and legal aspects. The project aims to develop personalized risk assessments and new therapeutic approaches.

Read the first bulletin (July 2024) here as PDF

The Bonn Science Night, held biennially since 2000, showcases exciting hands-on science in the city's heart. Scheduled for May 16-17, 2024, this 14th edition, themed "Freigeist," aligns with events celebrating "75 years of the national constitution – Democracy made in Bonn."

Fraunhofer SCAI showcased the COMMUTE project, among others. Visitors showed great interest in the research project, leading to engaging discussions between citizens and researchers.

Stream on LinkedIn

Program of the virtual symposium