HOCH Health Ostschweiz

Their core work

HOCH Health Ostschweiz is the regional hospital and academic medical centre for Eastern Switzerland, headquartered at Kantonsspital St. Gallen. Alongside clinical care, it runs translational biomedical research — notably in cardiac immunology and clinical data science — linking bedside patients to laboratory and informatics research. Its H2020 work combines real-world hospital data assets with immunology expertise, making it a bridge between clinical practice and fundamental research.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In their first H2020 engagement (HELICAL, 2019-2023), HOCH contributed to a doctoral training network focused on linking health records for clinical benefit — a data-science and epidemiology angle. From 2022 onward, the centre shifted decisively into bench-side immunology, winning a prestigious ERC Advanced Grant to lead CardiacStroma on stromal cell-immune interactions in heart inflammation. The trajectory is from supporting role in clinical informatics toward leading fundamental immunological research.

HOCH is moving from participating in clinical-informatics training networks toward leading frontier immunology research, signalling growing ambition as a principal investigator host institution.

How they like to work

HOCH has a mixed posture: participated in a large MSCA doctoral training network, then stepped up to coordinate a single-PI ERC Advanced Grant. Across just two projects it connects with 24 partners in 9 countries, suggesting network reach built around a specific principal investigator rather than institutional-scale consortium machinery.

Linked to 24 unique partners across 9 countries through just two H2020 projects, with collaborations spanning both clinical-data research networks and immunology consortia. Geographic footprint is pan-European rather than Swiss-centric.

What sets them apart

Unlike most H2020 hospitals that only supply patients or clinical sites, HOCH combines regional hospital infrastructure with an ERC Advanced Grant holder running an independent immunology programme. Partners gain access both to patient cohorts and real-world clinical data and to frontier immunology science under one roof — unusual for a non-university hospital of this size.

Highlights from their portfolio

• CardiacStroma
  EUR 2.42M ERC Advanced Grant — the prestige-level EU funding reserved for established leading researchers — with HOCH as sole coordinator, representing 90% of their total H2020 EC funding.
• HELICAL
  MSCA Innovative Training Network on health record linkage, positioning HOCH inside Europe's doctoral training ecosystem for clinical data science.