AIGENT - Building a European digital twin infrastructure that connects our health, homes and environment

“In the project, VTT will contribute to the development of the AIGENT’s Pan-European digital twin infrastructure, especially the AIGENT Nexus central orchestration layer, and test the solution by piloting digital twins in both healthcare and living environment scenarios”, says Mika Hilvo, Research Team Leader at VTT.

The AIGENT partners will build a European infrastructure where digital twins of people, homes and neighbourhoods can be connected, and where clinicians, planners and citizens can ask such questions in their own words. And AIGENT will not stay in the lab: it will be tested throughout the project by the people it is built for, so that by 2030 it works in real life.

In recent years, digital twins (virtual representations of real-world systems) have gained traction in both healthcare and environmental domains. They allow users to simulate “what-if” scenarios and test interventions before applying them in real life. However, most digital twins today are built for specific domains, such as a patient, a building or an energy system. These models rarely interact, even though in reality, health outcomes and environmental conditions are closely intertwined. This fragmentation creates practical and costly challenges: data formats and models differ, integration is complex, and combining insights across disciplines requires significant technical expertise. As a result, the broader potential of digital twins (for example linking indoor climate to respiratory health or housing conditions to wellbeing) remains largely untapped.

“What if digital twins of a person’s health, the buildings they inhabit, and the environment around them could speak to one another, and open the conversation to other fields? AIGENT is building the European infrastructure to connect these layers of data and models, with AI agents helping people explore how they interact and shape one another. Our ambition is to make the connections that shape our lives visible, interpretable and actionable, with people in control of their data and the benefits within everyone’s reach,” says Gökhan Ertaylan, AIGENT project coordinator at VITO.

The AIGENT project, which stands for “AI-GENerated digital Twin infrastructure for healthcare & living environment”, addresses these challenges by going further than building a prototype: AIGENT will develop a functional, Pan-European infrastructure where digital twins from different domains can be generated, connected and used together. Coordinated by VITO, the project will enable researchers, clinicians, housing actors, and policymakers to explore complex, cross-domain questions. For example, they may examine how building renovations affect both energy use and health outcomes, or how environmental conditions influence chronic diseases. A key objective is accessibility: through a no-code “Scenario Studio”, users will be able to formulate questions in natural language and translate them into simulations without needing advanced programming skills.

At its core, AIGENT combines several emerging technologies: generative artificial intelligence, simulation models and distributed computing. The infrastructure is based on a three-tier architecture:

• Edge Twin Nodes keep sensitive health and building data local, ensuring privacy.
• The AIGENT Nexus acts as a central orchestration layer where scenarios, knowledge bases, workflows and governance are defined, managed and executed.
• The AIGENT Compute Platform connects to European high-performance computing resources and AI Factory infrastructures to run large-scale simulations

This approach is designed to ensure that simulations remain privacy-preserving, explainable and compliant with European regulations, while still allowing large-scale, cross-domain analysis. To validate the platform, AIGENT will run six pilot cases across Belgium, Finland, and Greece, covering both healthcare and living environment applications such as cardiorespiratory monitoring, adverse drug reaction risk, adaptive healthy living, building energy management, indoor environmental quality and neighbourhood-scale planning.

AIGENT brings together a multidisciplinary consortium of research and technology organisations, universities, digital health and building experts, legal and ethical specialists, standardisation actors, healthcare networks and civil society organisations from across Europe and beyond. This diversity reflects the project’s cross-domain ambition. Technical partners contribute expertise in artificial intelligence, modelling and computing, while healthcare and environmental organisations ensure real-world relevance. Legal and ethical specialists address regulatory compliance, and stakeholder organisations help ensure that the infrastructure responds to societal needs.

AIGENT will run for four years, starting in October 2026. Its ambition is to move Europe from isolated digital twin experiments to a reusable, trustworthy and interoperable infrastructure supporting cross-domain simulations. By lowering technical barriers and enabling collaboration across disciplines, the project aims to support more informed decision-making in healthcare, urban planning and environmental management. In the longer term, the infrastructure may be extended to additional domains, contributing to a broader European ecosystem of interconnected digital twins. As digitalisation becomes increasingly central to both health and sustainability challenges, initiatives such as AIGENT illustrate how integrated approaches can help bridge the gap between data, models and real-world impact.

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• Full title: AI-GENerated digital Twin infrastructure for healthcare & living environment
• Start date: 1 October 2026
• Project duration: 48 months
• Budget: EUR 9,994,398.92 (EU contribution, Horizon Europe)
• Grant Agreement No: 101291258
• Call / Topic: HORIZON-INFRA-2025-01-TECH-04, AI-generated digital twins for science
• Project Coordinator: VITO (Vlaamse Instelling voor Technologisch Onderzoek), Belgium
   

• Belgium: 
  VITO, Vlaamse Instelling voor Technologisch Onderzoek (Coordinator)
  VPH Institute, Virtual Physiological Human Institute for Integrative Biomedical Research
  i~HD, European Institute for Innovation through Health Data
  EHTEL, European Health Telematics Association
  BDTA, Building Digital Twin Association
  AGE Platform Europe
  Timelex
   
• Croatia:
  RISE, Research and Innovation Services d.o.o.
   
• Finland:
  VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland
   
• Germany:
  HITS, Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies
   
• Greece:
  FORTH, Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas
  CERTH, Centre for Research and Technology Hellas
   
• Netherlands:
  Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e)
   
• Poland:
  University of Warsaw
   
• Slovenia:
  WONCA Europe
   
• New Zealand, Associated partner
  The University of Auckland
   

VTT
Mika Hilvo, project manager at VTT
[email protected]

AIGENT Project Coordinator
VITO
Gökhan Ertaylan
Mail

AIGENT Communication, Dissemination and Exploitation
RISE- Research and Innovation Services d.o.o.
Sofija Jelčić
Mail