The German Oncology Center (GOC), part of the broader German Medical Institute (GMI) in Cyprus, joins the European SEARCH project as a clinical partner, contributing its medical and research expertise to help validate the use of synthetic healthcare data in real-world settings. Founded in 2017, the GOC has since rapidly grown into a centre hosting both high-quality clinical care and leading research. With research as one of the three foundational pillars, the centre is actively involved in national and EU-level initiatives that integrate advanced technologies into routine healthcare practice.

A key challenge in modern healthcare research is the limited access to high-quality patient data due to ethical, legal, and logistical constraints. Synthetic data, which emulates the statistical properties of real data without exposing sensitive patient information, presents a promising solution.

SEARCH (Synthetic hEalthcare dAta goveRnanCe Hub), funded by the IHI, brings together over 20 organisations across 14 countries. The project aims to develop and validate synthetic data technologies that support AI-driven healthcare applications while preserving patient privacy and promoting FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data principles. GOC’s involvement spans multiple work packages, with a particular focus on clinical validation in cardiology, gastroenterology, and gynaecological oncology, including ovarian and cervical cancer domains.

GOC will contribute to both technical and practical forms of validation. Technical validation will involve comparing model performance when trained on real versus synthetic data, and contributing to the development of benchmark metrics that assess the quality, fairness, and bias of synthetic datasets. On the practical side, GOC will focus on evaluating the use of synthetic data in everyday clinical settings, including its application in medical training and other downstream tasks that support clinical operations.

The overarching vision of GOC’s participation in SEARCH is to bridge the gap between the rapidly growing field of synthetic data and its robust adoption to the real-world clinical domain. Validating synthetic datasets across multiple medical domains and operational contexts will contribute to improving access to high-quality, legally and ethically compliant data, streamlining clinical workflows, and support the training of healthcare professionals. The GOC is proud to contribute to this ambitious, highly impactful initiative alongside leading institutions spanning Europe.