Rafael Almeida

Rafael Almeida is a Director at SPMS (Shared Services of the Ministry of Health, Portugal), where he plays a central role in infrastructure, operations, and cloud services for the Portuguese National Health Service (SNS). With more than 20 years of experience in hospital systems and health IT management, he is dedicated to strengthening the technological backbone of healthcare, ensuring resilience, scalability, and innovation.

He is actively involved in key national projects, including the SNS Datalake, the modernization of the Ministry of Health's data centers, and RISNxG, the nationwide health network interconnecting over 1,900 SNS sites through a software-defined LAN (SD-LAN) architecture. His directorate also oversees the SNS cloud infrastructure, which he views as a strategic extension of the national health ecosystem.

Rafael Almeida holds a bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Coimbra (2014) and is currently pursuing a Master's in Medical Informatics at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto, with a focus on digital health and health information systems.

• Session: Panel Discussion, Who Owns Cloud Data? Infrastructure and Governance - "Balancing Trust and Control: Navigating Data Ownership and Governance in Healthcare Cloud Infrastructure - The case of Portugal" Thursday, 25 September 2025, 11:30-12:15 BST (UTC+1)