Data Isn't the New Oil. Knowledge Is — And It Starts With People, Not Technology.

Road to Bilbao: a conversation with Louis Hendriks, CEO and Founder of Global Value Web.

Every Road to Bilbao conversation aims to answer one question: what does it take to make the European Health Data Space real? My Real Data Better AI interview with Louis Hendriks came at it from outside Europe entirely, and that distance turned out to be the point. Louis joined from Washington, D.C., straight out of an FDA/DIA session on data and AI in drug development. He didn't bring EHDS regulation to the conversation. It was two decades of building data and AI capability across life sciences and healthcare, and a clear view of what actually turns data into value for patients.

Louis is the CEO and founder of Global Value Web (GVW). He came into healthcare about ten years ago after a career in life sciences digital infrastructure, and everything since has been built around one idea: value chains only matter if they deliver something to the people at the end of them. In life sciences and healthcare, that's the patient.

Here is what I took from the conversation.

1. The goal is patient-centric today, human-centric tomorrow

Louis didn't hesitate when I asked what the real challenge is in creating value from health data. He goes straight to the top: a patient-centric, data-driven, AI-enabled value chain. He quickly added a caveat we'd discussed privately: it should ultimately be human-centric, covering global health as a right for everyone. But his advice was pragmatic. Get it right for patients first, before trying to take on healthcare for humanity at large. Optimise anything else first, he said, and you're optimising the wrong thing.

2. Real-world evidence is unlocking hundreds of millions of records, and we've barely started

Louis traced his own entry into this field back to OHDSI, the Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics community, and to people he credits as its driving forces: George Hripcsak at Columbia, Patrick Ryan at J&J, Nigel Hughes, and Peter Rijnbeek at Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, whose work has been central to unlocking patient records across Europe over the past five to six years. Thousands of collaborators worldwide are now using that data to generate insights across therapeutic areas. For Louis, the opportunity isn't just feeding drug discovery. Observational health data can bring value back to hospitals, doctors' practices and patients far faster than that, and he thinks this is still a largely untapped avenue.

3. Capability has an order: people, data, process, technology

This was the structural idea underneath everything else Louis said. A working capability, in his framing, is people, data, process and technology, in that sequence, not the reverse. Most organisations build it backwards: they create structures and processes first, and only then let the data flow through them. Louis's approach starts with getting people close to the data before anything else, which is also why he's personally running AI training programmes inside GVW for domain specialists, not just technologists.

4. India is where the model is being proven at manageable, then massive, scale

GVW runs the OHDSI India chapter, and Louis described it as a live proving ground: patient registration systems built to make data organised and shareable from the start, conversations with data-driven doctors willing to act on what the data shows, and a concrete case with an oncology hospital where GVW is applying OHDSI standards to accelerate insights that reduce patient risk and improve quality of life. The scale is a reminder of what's coming. The Netherlands, where Louis is from, has 15 to 18 million people. India has 1.5 billion, still accelerating toward its development targets over the next 5 to 15 years.

5. The Basque Country as a second proving ground, at a size you can actually demonstrate

This is where Bilbao enters directly. Louis and Paul first met at the Global Digital Health Summit in Mumbai, where GVW presented the OHDSI India chapter two to three years ago; the summit returns this year in Delhi, where GVW will present both the patient lifecycle and the drug-product lifecycle side by side, alongside companies Louis calls "value nodes" for their specific data or AI innovation, in a session run with Dr Rajendra Gupta. Louis sees the same model applying to the Basque Country: a manageable size where you can bring doctors, digital teams and hospitals together and demonstrably get value out of data early. Prove it works in two ecosystems, India and the Basque Country, he said, and you've proven the model. When I asked directly whether he saw the Basque Country as a living lab of health-data secondary use excellence within the EHDS, his answer was an unqualified yes.

6. Data trust and lineage come before AI reasoning, not after

Louis was direct about where the field is heading next: every AI capability now depends on being certain where the data came from, its lineage, and how it has been scientifically validated, especially as AI moves into scientific reasoning itself. As one concrete example from his own network, a doctor built his own LLM as a dialogue tool for clinicians, which GVW has demonstrated at the Global Digital Health Summit and which Louis is keen to bring to the Basque community as well.

What this means for Bilbao

GVW is co-organising a workshop with BIOEF on 24 September, built around exactly this idea: the Basque Country as a working capability, end to end, for patient-centric, data-driven, AI-enabled value creation. Louis won't be in Bilbao in person, but his team will be there in force, including Swetha Kiranmayi Jakkuva and Tim Napper. Swetha will lead one of the Bilbao Implementation Brief working-session groups — Pillar 2, on genomics in the EHR and cohort sharing — and join the Closing Plenary to bring GVW's conclusions into the room.

When I asked Louis for his closing thought on what success looks like for the European Health Data Space, he didn't talk about infrastructure or regulation. He talked about what the data is for. Mining for patient outcomes, he said, not mining for money. In an industry where the two get confused more often than anyone would like to admit, that's a good line to carry into Bilbao.

That's the question we'll be working on together on 24 and 25 September. Louis's team will be there, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the room answers it.

Watch the full interview from the Real Data Better AI series and join us in Bilbao for the Health Data Forum Global Hybrid Summit 2026.