Seville, Spain – AURORAI, Advancing Pandemic Preparedness and Response through High-Quality Data and AI, officially started on 1 September 2026. With a budget of nearly €7 million, the four-year Horizon Europe project involves 14 expert organisations from 10 countries across Europe and beyond. On 22–23 September, its partners met in Seville for the project’s kick-off meeting, hosted by project coordinator IDENER Research & Development.

This four-year Horizon Europe initiative aims to strengthen preparedness and response to possible future disease outbreaks, especially when reliable information is limited, and decisions need to be made quickly.

Recent pandemic experience exposed several weaknesses in preparedness and response, including fragmented data, limited forecasting capacity, gaps in early-warning systems, and difficult decision-making under uncertainty. AURORAI will address these challenges by combining high-quality, trustworthy data with explainable AI tools for modelling, prediction and decision support.

A particular focus is Disease X, a concept used to describe a possible future disease threat caused by a pathogen that is not yet known. Rather than focusing on one specific disease, AURORAI will develop tools designed to adapt to new threats as they arise.

Commenting on the project’s ambitions, Ana Isabel Martín Perales, Coordinator of AURORAI, said: 

“The next health crisis may emerge in ways we cannot yet predict, which is why preparedness must start now. Through AURORAI, we aim to provide tools that help Europe anticipate emerging threats, make better informed decisions, and protect communities when it matters most.”

The project will develop five connected innovations: a decentralised knowledge graph for secure and interoperable data use; a multi-pathogen Disease X modelling tool; an early-warning and outbreak prediction tool; an AI-based decision support system; and a Knowledge Hub for researchers, healthcare professionals, policymakers and citizens. These technologies will form a single AURORAI platform and will be tested through four use cases at European, national and local levels.
 

The partners
The AURORAI consortium includes IDENER Research & Development (Spain), VICOMTECH (Spain), PROSPEH DOO (Slovenia), CERTH (Greece), Pázmány Péter Catholic University (Hungary), Fundació Sanitària d’Igualada (Spain), DEXAI – Etica Artificiale (Italy), Sciensano (Belgium), Ministry of Health (Türkiye), MK Private Research Centre for Healthcare Services (Cyprus), Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Spain), AUSTRALO Interinnov Marketing Lab (Spain), SevenBlue (France), and CSIRO (Australia), which participates as an associated partner.

Project website:
www.aurorai-project.eu