A Privacy-by-Design approach for large-scale research projects with no data transfer.
12 february 2026 – Softway Medical, a French leader in digital healthcare, and Tune Insight, a software publisher specializing in secure collaboration for health data, announced a strategic partnership today.
As the majority of health data continues to go under-exploited, these two players are working together to meet a key objective: facilitating health data sharing without compromising on privacy, fundamental patient rights, or healthcare institution governance.
An approach aligned with the upcoming EHDS
his partnership aims to facilitate upstream phases of medical research in Europe by enabling large-scale distributed medical analysis with no data transfer and in strict compliance with data source sovereignty.
Based on the mutual pooling of Softway Medical’s scientific and methodological expertise and Tune Insight’s federated computing technologies, this joint approach paves the way for the industrial deployment of federated computing in France and Europe.
Their goal is to propose an end-to-end solution that will coordinate a network of health data for predictive medicine and public health, fully aligned with the requirements of the upcoming European Health Data Space (EHDS) in terms of governance, interoperability and security.
Following the acquisition of Epiconcept in July 2024, the Softway Medical Group is taking another step towards its data ambition, while Tune Insight is accelerating its development strategy with a new collaboration network in Europe.
A unique sovereignty-based model for healthcare actors
This new vision, shared by both companies, provides a unique opportunity for hospitals, clinics, medical laboratories, imaging centers and public health institutions, that can now participate in large-scale multicenter research projects, real-world studies, and the training of cutting-edge AI algorithms without health data ever leaving their infrastructures.
Facilities maintain full ownership, responsibility and decision-making authority for their data, in a secure, traceable framework that is fully compliant with European regulations.
Privacy-by-design technology for medical research
The joint Softway Medical-Tune Insight solution is based on an architecture that is purposefully designed to guarantee outstanding data protection:
- Zero data transfer: analysis is carried out locally, wherever the data is located.
- Secure federated analysis: researchers can only access aggregated and anonymized statistical results, not the individual data.
- Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs): a combination of the latest advances in cryptographic (homomorphic encryption, secure multipartite computation) and non-cryptographic technologies (differential privacy, disclosure control measures) ensures that data stays protected throughout its lifecycle, minimizing risk and facilitating regulatory compliance.
- Accelerated clinical research: before starting clinical trials, pharmaceutical companies and CROs can assess the relevance of a protocol (cohorts, numbers, inclusion criteria) more rapidly, particularly in oncology, and rare and infectious diseases, significantly reducing decision-making and implementation times.
“This collaboration reflects our goal of building a European health data infrastructure—one that is industrial, sovereign and operational. With Tune Insight, we are building the foundations for large-scale medical research, without sacrificing ownership or ethics.” Sherley Brothier, Softway Medical CPTO
À propos du Groupe Softway Medical
Inspiring digital healthcare means illuminating and enabling the evolution of practices for both healthcare professionals and patients. For 25 years, we have been driven by our sharp vision of the healthcare market and its changes. We do not follow trends; we anticipate them, and sometimes even provoke them.
Through the strength of the Group, we ensure that the practices and usages of tomorrow become a reality today. In doing so, we illuminate and enable the evolution of practices, allowing healthcare professionals to be ever more efficient and patients to become actors in their own health. At Softway Medical Group, we are pragmatic visionaries.
In France, Belgium, and Canada, with over 1,200 employees, our solutions equip more than 200,000 healthcare professionals in private and public institutions, outpatient care, imaging centres, and laboratory services. As both an editor, integrator, and health data hosting provider, our unique positioning allows us to break down silos, improve the patient care pathway, and contribute to prevention for all citizens.
About Tune Insight
Tune Insight is a European software publisher specializing in dedicated solutions for health data sharing. Founded in Switzerland as an École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) spin-off, the company is part of the European healthcare, research and innovation landscape.
Faced with the widely accepted observation that more than 97% of hospital data goes unused, Tune Insight has a clear objective: to allow health data sharing while respecting fundamental human rights. Ethics, security and responsible governance are at the heart of the company’s vision – because sustainable innovation is built on trust.
With the Tune Insight platform, healthcare actors (hospitals, researchers, institutions and the biopharma industry) can analyze and exploit data without ever transferring them or compromising their confidentiality. By removing technical, regulatory and organizational barriers, it provides a trusted environment that complies with European regulations—an essential condition for its widespread adoption.
Tune Insight’s objective is to create a true ecosystem for health knowledge, where ethics and progress go hand in hand, and data can be transformed into reliable, actionable, and secure real-world evidence, supporting medical innovation and personalized medicine.
