Some events leave you with new slides. Others leave you with new energy. The second edition of the D³4Health Summer School, held in Paestum from 24 to 26 September 2026, was definitely the second kind.
The Summer School is organised by the D³4Health Foundation (Digital Driven Diagnostics, Prognostics and Therapeutics for Sustainable Health). The project is funded under the National Complementary Plan to the NRRP and brings together 28 partners across universities, research institutes and companies. For three days it gathered young researchers, PhD students and professionals from all over Italy to work on the open challenges of digital health.
Lab 7: biomarkers before algorithms
On Thursday 25 September I led Lab 7, a hands-on session on imaging biomarkers of the cervical spinal cord in multiple sclerosis. We worked through a live demo on an anonymised MRI scan, following the methods we are developing within Spoke 1 of D³4Health, coordinated by Prof. Aldo Quattrone.
The message I wanted to leave was a methodological one. Before reaching for complex AI models, we should ask what quantitative information is already hidden in the exams acquired every day in clinical routine. Building reliable, interpretable biomarkers from those images is not a preliminary step to skip. It is the foundation that makes any later model meaningful, and trustworthy.
The hackathon: two winning teams, one shared footprint
The Summer School closed with a hackathon, and I had the pleasure of mentoring one of the teams. Their project, Oncoria, tackles the integrated management of oncology therapy. It is a digital system that streamlines how cancer drugs are handled and delivered to patients, with an interface for community pharmacies and a patient app that includes a personalised treatment calendar. Watching the team turn a real clinical pain point into a working concept in such a short time was the best part of my week.
Oncoria was one of the two winning projects. The other one, HelpSasà, also speaks the language of Magna Graecia University. It is a data platform for neuroscience research centres, covering the whole path from advanced imaging data collection and processing to integration with clinical and cognitive information. My PhD student Chiara Camastra, from the PhD programme in Digital Technologies Applied to Medicine, gave a decisive contribution to the project.
Seeing a team I mentored and a team with my own PhD student both win was a genuinely proud moment. It was a reminder that the most valuable outcome of projects like D³4Health is not only the science, but the people who learn to do it.
Thank you
A warm thank you to the D³4Health Foundation and to all the organisers, lecturers and participants for three intense and inspiring days. See you at the next edition.
📰 Read the official news from Magna Graecia University: Innovazione e ricerca, l’Università Magna Graecia trionfa alla Summer School & Hackathon D³4Health
