TARGET EU Project – 3rd Annual Consortium Meeting
The 3rd Annual Meeting of the TARGET EU Project took place in Thessaloniki, Greece, on 28–29 May, hosted by the Centre for Research & Technology Hellas (CERTH). More than 50 researchers from 15 institutes and universities gathered for two days of scientific exchange, technical alignment, and clinical collaboration around Digital Twin technologies in cardiovascular care.
A few things about the TARGET EU Project
TARGET is focused on developing health virtual twins for the personalised management of stroke related to atrial fibrillation (AF). By introducing virtual twin-driven AI models, the project aims to better understand AF and its complications, including AF-related stroke, and to support improved prevention, acute management, and rehabilitation strategies.
As atrial fibrillation is a common and serious cardiac arrhythmia that significantly increases the risk of stroke and heart failure, TARGET is advancing novel personalised decision-support tools that help optimise clinical pathways, improve patient quality of life, and reduce healthcare burden.
Read more about the TARGET project here: https://target-horizon.eu/
A strong start to collaborative discussions
The meeting opened with a warm welcome from CERTH, followed by engaging discussions across the consortium. Partners shared updates on the clinical studies NOTE-AF, TAILOR, PEARL, and FOSTER, alongside progress in model development, data integration, and clinical tool co-design.
A central focus was the continued co-development of TARGET interfaces, ensuring that clinical requirements and AI-driven modelling approaches are tightly aligned to support real-world translation of Digital Twin technology.
Breakout sessions, workshops, and clinical translation
Interactive parallel sessions enabled focused group discussions across clinical, technical, and methodological workstreams. These sessions addressed progress across biomarkers, modelling approaches, data collection pipelines, and analytics frameworks, while also highlighting key challenges in data harmonisation and analysis.
Hands-on workshops further supported clinical engagement, helping bridge the gap between methodological development and practical implementation within ongoing studies.
Strategic clustering across Horizon Europe projects
A key highlight of the meeting was the clustering activity between TARGET, GEMINI, and VITAL Horizon Europe projects. The session focused on aligning complementary efforts across cardiovascular and stroke-focused Digital Twin initiatives. TARGET addresses atrial fibrillation and AF-related stroke, VITAL develops multi-scale cardiovascular modelling approaches, and GEMINI focuses on ischaemic and haemorrhagic stroke management.
Rather than duplicating efforts, the discussion emphasised shared methodological foundations and interoperability challenges across Digital Twin systems in healthcare.
Key topics included:
- AI methods for cardiovascular and stroke applications
- Multi-scale and hybrid modelling approaches
- Digital twins for clinical decision support and rehabilitation prognosis
- In silico approaches for healthcare innovation
A roundtable discussion provided a structured exchange on future integration pathways for virtual human technologies, followed by an open Q&A with participants and panelists.
Read more about GEMINI and VITAL Horizon Europe projects here:
https://vital-horizoneurope.eu/
https://dth-gemini.eu/
People, collaboration, and community
Beyond the technical agenda, the meeting highlighted the strength of collaboration across the consortium and the wider European research ecosystem. Discussions were open, constructive, and highly focused on translating innovation into clinical impact.
A big thank you goes to the CERTH team for hosting and organising the event:
Dimitrios Tsaopoulos, Spiros Nikolopoulos, Komaris Sokratis, Konstantinos Risvas, Panagiotis Anagnostou, Fotis Kalaganis, and Margarita Grammatikopoulou.
We also extend our sincere thanks to the NOESIS Science Center & Technology Museum (https://www.noesis.edu.gr/) for hosting one of the consortium sessions in an excellent environment that supported exchange and collaboration.
Looking ahead
The Thessaloniki meeting marked another important step for the TARGET EU Project in advancing AI-enabled Digital Twins for cardiovascular care. With strong collaboration across partners, the consortium continues to work towards improved prediction, prevention, and personalised management of AF-related stroke, ultimately aiming to improve outcomes for patients and caregivers.
