HOSPITAL CLINIC DE BARCELONA

Their core work

Hospital Clínic de Barcelona is one of Spain's leading university hospitals, contributing deep clinical expertise, patient cohorts, and real-world medical data to European research consortia. Their work spans liver disease (especially cirrhosis), HIV/AIDS therapeutics and vaccines, neuroscience, cardiovascular conditions, and chronic disease management. They primarily serve as a clinical validation site and third-party expert within large multi-center trials and research initiatives, providing the bridge between laboratory science and patient care. Their involvement across 64 H2020 projects reflects their position as a trusted clinical partner for translational biomedical research.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In the early period (2015–2018), Hospital Clínic focused heavily on clinical trials for specific diseases — liver cirrhosis, HIV, stroke, atrial fibrillation — and on patient empowerment through eHealth tools. From 2018 onward, their involvement shifted toward large-scale neuroscience infrastructure (Human Brain Project, ICEI), graphene-based technologies, microbiome research, and inflammation biology. This reflects a move from disease-specific clinical trials toward data-intensive, systems-level biomedical research with a stronger computational and omics dimension.

Moving toward data-rich, systems-medicine approaches — future partners should expect a hospital that brings both patient access and computational biology capabilities to consortia.

How they like to work

Hospital Clínic almost exclusively participates as a third party (61 of 64 projects), meaning they contribute clinical sites, patient data, and medical expertise to consortia led by others. They have never coordinated an H2020 project. With 972 unique partners across 47 countries, they are a widely connected but non-leading node — a go-to clinical validation partner that many consortia want but that does not drive project design or management.

Exceptionally broad network of 972 unique consortium partners spanning 47 countries, reflecting their role as a clinical site recruited into many large multi-center studies. Their connections are pan-European with no single geographic concentration beyond the expected Western European research hubs.

What sets them apart

What sets Hospital Clínic apart is the sheer breadth of clinical domains they cover — from liver disease and HIV to neuroscience and cybersecurity — combined with their willingness to serve as a third-party clinical site at scale. For consortium builders, they offer immediate access to a major teaching hospital's patient populations, clinical infrastructure, and ethical approvals in Barcelona. Their unusual involvement in cybersecurity projects (CIPSEC, CLARUS) also signals openness to non-traditional health-tech collaborations.

Highlights from their portfolio

• CIPSEC
  One of only 3 projects where Hospital Clínic received direct EU funding (EUR 224,872), and an unusual topic for a hospital — critical infrastructure cybersecurity protection.
• LIVERHOPE
  Flagship liver cirrhosis project testing a novel simvastatin-rifaximin therapy, representing the hospital's deep strength in hepatology clinical trials.
• EAVI2020
  Part of the European AIDS Vaccine Initiative — a large-scale, long-running (2015–2022) effort reflecting the hospital's sustained commitment to HIV vaccine development.