(ANSA) - UDINE, 11 SET - Alleanza Contro il Cancro (Alliance Against Cancer), the Italian Ministry of Health's national oncology network, together with 28 partners across 12 countries and under the coordination of the National Cancer Institute of Milan, has designed a digital platform as part of the European IDEA4RC project to bring together clinical data on rare adult cancers into a shared system. The solution, compliant with the GDPR and the European Health Data Space (EHDS regulation, which takes effect in March 2025, enables the "secondary" use of data for research and innovation while safeguarding the privacy and dataownership of the original holders. Each year in Europe, 650,000 people are diagnosed with one of roughly 200 recognized rare cancers, accounting for about a quarter of all cancer cases on the continent. "Every day that passes without stronger networks and more accessible data is a missed opportunity for patients and the people who care for them," the IDEA4RC project leads emphasize. The platform uses a federated model: data are not moved; they remain at individual centers and can be analyzed locally. Researchers receive only aggregated results, with no exposure of personal information. The ecosystem is powered by artificial intelligence tools capable, among other things, of extracting clinical information from unstructured text (such as physicians' notes) and converting it into interoperable formats, thereby bringing in less digitized centers as well. With the tools ready and testing underway on real-world data, the project is entering a decisive phase, calling for new allies: clinical centers willing to share data securely, technology companies interested in piloting or integrating the developed tools, and institutional and professional stakeholders to support its rollout and sustainability. (ANSA).