NEODATA+ turning fragmented neonatal data into shared, life-saving algorithms

Neolook's method starts at the bedside, and NEODATA+ now carries that method to European scale. The project – selected in April 2026 as one of the first three funded under UNITE's Open Call 1 – connects neonatal intensive care units in the Netherlands, Italy and Romania around a shared «spine dataset», the vital signs every NICU already records.

A single 20-to-25-bed unit holds too little data to train robust algorithms. By combining three departments, the consortium crosses the statistical barrier that keeps paediatric innovation underpowered and reaches the accuracy clinicians actually need.

The harder problem is not technical. Neonatal data is the most sensitive domain in healthcare: patients who cannot consent, parents under extreme stress and an ethics committee with veto power in every country. NEODATA+ keeps each hospital's raw data local and governed, and shows that GDPR, MDR, NEN 7510 and the new European Health Data Space can work together in practice. Solve the governance for newborns – the hardest case there is – and the same model scales to almost every other clinical domain.

Marco D'Agata, our founder and CEO, spoke with UNITE about where NEODATA+ came from, why «bedside to breakthrough» beats the conventional innovation pipeline and what success looks like in eighteen months. Read the full interview on the UNITE website:

Source Article: NEODATA+: Connecting NICUs Across Borders to Turn Fragmented Vital Signs Into Life-Saving Algorithms.