Resilience is not built during a crisis, but beforehand. That is the thread Frank Glod pulls in his interview for HWL26.
Deputy CEO of the Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH) and Project Coordinator of CLINNOVA, the European initiative that pools health data from Luxembourg, France, Germany and Switzerland, Frank Glod is also a member of the Scientific Committee of Healthcare Week Luxembourg.
His interview moves in four stages: what the pandemic taught Luxembourg, what administrative borders do to data, why CLINNOVA is the right response, and what HWL26 must bring to light in 2026.
1. RESILIENCE IS PREPARED IN ADVANCE
On what public health and translational research concretely bring to a resilient system, Frank Glod starts from a specific mechanism: Luxembourg's Large Scale Testing, led by the LIH during the pandemic.
"The COVID-19 pandemic showed that a health system's resilience is not built during a crisis, but well before it. (…) According to a study by the World Health Organization (WHO), Luxembourg recorded one of the lowest pandemic-related excess mortality rates in Europe."
From this he draws a four-pillar framework (surveillance, anticipation, decision, allocation) and a thesis that shifts the debate from preparedness towards architecture:
"The challenge for the future is to make these mechanisms permanent so that they become structural capabilities of the health system rather than exceptional responses to a crisis."
2. THE REAL OBSTACLE: ADMINISTRATIVE BORDERS
On cross-border friction points, Glod offers a direct lesson:
"One of the main lessons of the pandemic is that administrative borders close faster than knowledge- and data-sharing mechanisms can be put in place."
He identifies three challenges in a precise order: data interoperability (existing but fragmented), coordination between researchers, clinicians, authorities and industry, and adoption on the ground, because "producing scientific evidence is not enough; it must also be translated into operational recommendations and into tools that can be used in the field."
This diagnosis meets that of Giovanni Briganti (Chair of AI and Digital Medicine, UMons; HWL Scientific Committee) in this same series: "The border, paradoxically, becomes here an instrument of proof." Where Briganti frames the border as a scientific test, Glod frames it as an operational emergency.
3. CLINNOVA: THE ANSWER IS ALREADY UNDER WAY
On the priority lever for 2026, Glod does not offer a hypothesis; he points to a project he leads:
"If one lever had to be singled out as a priority, it would probably be the deployment of federated data infrastructures at European scale. (…) This is precisely the challenge taken up by initiatives such as CLINNOVA, led in Luxembourg by the LIH (…) a harmonised and federated data infrastructure, born of collaboration between several countries, notably Luxembourg, France, Germany and Switzerland."
And the economic metaphor, a reminder that an infrastructure is judged by what it lets others do:
"Harmonised data infrastructures could become for precision medicine what transport networks are for the economy: an essential infrastructure allowing innovations to circulate faster."
This point extends that of Simone Niclou (Vice-Rector for Research, University of Luxembourg; LIH) in this same series: "Today Luxembourg does not have 'university hospital structures', which creates a gap between laboratory research (so-called pre-clinical) and clinical research." CLINNOVA is not a substitute for these missing structures. It is an architecture that works around their absence by building at European scale what is missing at national scale.
4. HWL26: MOVING BEYOND THE PILOT
Frank Glod's ambition for HWL26 shifts the cursor from prototype to impact:
"We would like to see partnerships emerge that are able to move beyond pilot projects and deliver concrete impact for patients."
The example he gives is a pathway: researchers who develop, clinicians who evaluate, industry players who deploy. And a clear ambition for Luxembourg:
"To make Luxembourg not only a place where innovation is conceived, but also a place where it is developed, validated and implemented for the benefit of society."
📅 Healthcare Week Luxembourg — 30 September & 1 October 2026
📍 Luxexpo The Box, Luxembourg
Exhibit • Participate • Connect → www.hwl.lu
