When a word becomes a watchword, it is time to question its meaning.
That is exactly whatProf. Dr. Giovanni Brigantidoes from the very first sentence of his interview forHealthcare Week Luxembourg 2026.
A psychiatrist,Chair of AI and Digital Medicine at the University of Mons,Head of Computational Medicine and Neuropsychiatry,Head of the Psychiatry Department at CHU HELORA,Visiting Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford, andLead of AI4Health (AI4Belgium), Prof. Briganti is one of the leading voices on artificial intelligence in healthcare in French-speaking Belgium. He is also amember of the Scientific Committee of Healthcare Week Luxembourg.
The HWL26 central theme —Resilience of Tomorrow's Healthcare: From Preparedness to Antifragility – People, Systems & AI— finds a particularly insightful interpretation in this conversation: that of a healthcare leader who sees resilience as a shared endeavour across the Greater Region and refuses to equate it with mere robustness.
RESILIENCE IS BUILT THROUGH NETWORKS
"Resilience has become a watchword, which is always a sign that we should question what it really means. It is often confused with robustness—that is, the ability of a system to withstand disruption. Yet a healthcare system should be judged less by its rigidity than by its capacity to reorganise under pressure while continuing to fulfil its primary mission: caring for patients. The pandemic demonstrated this unequivocally. The systems that endured were those with redundancy, flexibility and, above all, shared information. It is from this perspective that I would like to look at Belgium."
His assessment of Belgium is both precise and political.
"Our country suffers from a structural fragility that even its creativity struggles to compensate for: the fragmentation of responsibilities. Between the federal government and the federated entities, between linguistic communities and different levels of governance, healthcare decision-making becomes dispersed—and with it, the possibility of a coherent digital health policy. The paradox is well known to everyone working in the sector: where the State should have built an interoperable infrastructure, private actors ultimately assembled it themselves, one patient record after another, one platform after another. The question is therefore as much political as it is technical: who owns the architecture that connects citizens' health data?"
When it comes to health data, Europe offers a unique opportunity—provided we do not close the window as soon as it opens.
"For the first time, Europe is providing us with a common framework through the European Health Data Space (EHDS), whose gradual implementation will shape both the primary and secondary use of health data in the years ahead. This is a tremendous opportunity, provided we do not reproduce at the European level the same fragmentation that exists at the national level."
This echoes the point made byJean-Philippe Arié (Luxinnovation)elsewhere in this interview series:
"Europe will be able to rely on trusted and sovereign data to support its decision-making."
The EHDS is not a finished achievement—it is an ongoing project, and one that could still fall short of its ambitions.
On education, Prof. Briganti highlights an area in which Belgium has taken the lead—and one that he helped to shape.
"When it comes to skills, I remain convinced that educating clinicians is the fundamental lever, without which no technology can truly deliver on its promises. French-speaking Belgium was a pioneer by making artificial intelligence and digital health mandatory components of medical education, while fostering a collective approach through initiatives such as AI4Belgium. This leadership is real, but it is also fragile, as political instability and discontinuous funding could erode it within just a few years."
Finally, when discussing access to innovation, he turns a simple question into a guiding principle.
"When it comes to access to innovation, one simple question should come before all others: who actually benefits? Technology is never neutral. An algorithm validated on one population cannot be assumed to perform equally well elsewhere, and innovation that benefits only those who are already best equipped ultimately widens the very inequalities it claims to address."
He concludes:
"This is precisely why a country the size of Belgium, located at the heart of the Greater Region, cannot think of resilience as a purely national matter. Here, resilience is, by its very nature, shared."
