Europe Made of Genes

Road to Bilbao | Entrepreneurial Reflections on Genomics, Citizenship and the Future of Health Data

Europe's health data future will not be built by regulation alone.

It will also be shaped by entrepreneurs, scientists, clinicians, citizens and health systems willing to translate complex data into meaningful, trusted and useful forms of care.

This is why the work of people like Miquel Bru deserves attention on the Road to Bilbao.

Miquel is part of a new generation of European health entrepreneurs working at the frontier where genomics, biomedical data, artificial intelligence and personalised health meet. Through initiatives such as Made of Genes https://madeofgenes.ai/, he has helped bring genomic and molecular data closer to real-world questions: how we understand risk, how we personalise prevention, how we support performance, and how citizens can take a more active role in their own health information.

The name itself is powerful.

Made of Genes reminds us that the future of health data is not abstract. It is embodied. It is personal. It is biological. It is connected to families, communities, lifestyles, environments and choices.

But Europe is not only made of genes.

It is also made of rights, trust, public health systems, scientific communities, patient voices and social expectations about how sensitive data should be used.

This is the challenge that Bilbao must help address.

Genomics is one of the most promising fields in health innovation, but also one of the most demanding. It can support earlier diagnosis, rare disease research, oncology, prevention, pharmacogenomics and more personalised care. Yet it also raises difficult questions about consent, privacy, re-identification, interpretation, equity and secondary use.

Sequencing is not enough.

The real question is what happens after the data exists.

• Can it be interpreted responsibly?
• Can it be connected with other forms of health and real-world data?
• Can it support better decisions without reducing people to risk scores?
• Can it be governed in a way that citizens understand and trust?
• Can it help health systems move from reactive care to earlier, more personalised and preventive models?

These are not only scientific questions. They are social and institutional questions.

They are also entrepreneurial questions.

Between policy ambition and health-system transformation, Europe needs practical builders: people and organisations capable of turning ideas into platforms, evidence, workflows and services that can actually be used.

This is where initiatives like Made of Genes become interesting for the Road to Bilbao. The platform presents itself as integrating genomics, biomarkers, psychology, lifestyle and real-world data through AI-powered biomedical intelligence. That combination points to a broader evolution: from genomics as a specialist laboratory domain to precision health as a more integrated, citizen-centred ecosystem.

For the European Health Data Space, this matters deeply.

EHDS will not succeed if it remains only a legal or technical framework. It must enable the trustworthy use of data that people can recognise as valuable. It must support research and innovation, as well as transparency, consent, accountability, and public benefit. Genomic data will be one of its hardest tests.

It is sensitive, durable and deeply personal. It may reveal information not only about an individual, but also about relatives and future generations. This means that governance cannot be an afterthought. Trust cannot be assumed. And innovation cannot be separated from legitimacy.

That is why Bilbao is the right place to continue this conversation.

The Health Data Forum Global Hybrid Summit 2026 will focus on making EHDS real in practice, with particular attention to high-dimensional data such as genomics and imaging. These are the areas where Europe's ambitions for health data, AI and innovation meet the practical realities of infrastructure, interoperability, cybersecurity, consent and trust.

A Europe made of genes will need more than genomic science.

• It will need responsible entrepreneurs.
• It will need public institutions capable of stewarding data.
• It will need patients and citizens who are treated as participants rather than merely data sources.
• It will need health systems that can turn insight into better care.

And it will need forums where these actors can meet, challenge each other and build shared understanding.

That is the Road to Bilbao.

Not a road towards technology for its own sake, but towards a health data future where intelligence is grounded in real data, real people and real trust.