OC#9 2026

CEN/TC251 Health Informatics is a standards delivery organisation, meaning that it approves standards in Europe, but the standards do not have to be created in Europe. In fact, many of them come from the global health informatics committee ISO/TC215. For this reason, it is important to monitor and contribute to the standards prepared in ISO/TC215. This is what the purpose of this fellowship was about.
ISO/TC215 has around 10 working groups (WGs) and CEN/TC251 has two. I am the convener of the second one and I try to follow those ISO/TC215 WGs that operate within the scope of my WG in CEN/TC251. This is not always easy because the ISO/TC215 WG meetings take place at the same time. In ISO/TC215 I participate mainly in interoperability, information security, and health software development areas.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is coming to healthcare, too. As I have AI experience through my doctoral studies and projects that followed, it has been natural for me to follow AI standardisation, too. The ISO/TC215 meeting in Toronto in October 2025 made it clear that the number of AI related work items is increasing in ISO/TC215. ISO/TC215 has a joint working group 3 (JWG3) with JTC1/SC42 Artificial Intelligence. The idea is that the ISO/TC215 AI work items are developed in this JWG3. Attendance in JWG3 is important also because I am a member of the CEN Strategic Advisory Group on AI in healthcare.
During the ISO/TC215 Toronto meetings in October 2025, SC42 held its meetings in Sydney, Australia. After the working day was over in Toronto, work began in Sydney in Toronto evening time. I participated in particularly the healthcare AI standards development JWG3 and SC42/WG4 Use Cases meetings virtually in Sydney. Attendance in JWG3 meetings was important to motivate the ISO/TC215 initiated standardisation projects to the SC42 leadership. Through my participation, the other parties became more aware of European values in AI standardisation.
 

The sectors of Digital Twins, Virtual Worlds/Citiverse, IoT and Data Spaces are fragmented, especially the uneven uptake of NGSI‑LD, Smart Data Models/SAREF and governance models creates a barrier for cross‑domain interoperability in cities. Therefore, I focus on harmonising these layers within ITU‑T Citiverse and EU Local Digital Twin  (LDT) Toolbox. I also contribute to aligning LDT and Data Space governance with UNE 0087:2025 and the Gaia‑X Trust Framework to operationalise sovereignty, compliance and automated conformance. Moreover, I contribute to mapping LDT/MIM8, NGSI‑LD, SIMPL and Citiverse deliverables to speed deployment and avoid duplicate or conflicting specs. 
 

A key goal of my work is to advance the digital transformation of standardisation itself. While digital processes are already common in business and administration, most standards are still developed using traditional, text-based methods with a high degree of manual effort. I aim to make standards digital, machine-readable, and easier to maintain, supported by tools that enable automated versioning, validation, and quality assurance.
I also strongly promote the use and evolution of Open Standards. Open and freely available standards encourage broader participation, faster development cycles, and more thorough expert review across the European and international community.
With the fellowship, I can expand my ongoing work on the European e-invoicing standard EN16931, turning voluntary contributions into focused development. The goal is to bridge the gap between theoretical standard specifications and practical implementation through automation and open-source collaboration.
Ultimately, this effort contributes to greater efficiency, transparency, and digital sovereignty within Europe’s standardisation ecosystem — ensuring that the standards themselves become as modern and interoperable as the digital solutions they enable.
 

Standardisation in the field of Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies is imperative to promote interoperability, security, and innovation across European markets. The rapid evolution of these technologies has led to a fragmented landscape of standards globally. This fragmentation presents challenges such as hindered cross-border data flow and increased compliance burdens on European businesses. My activity aims to address these critical gaps by actively participating in the creation of comprehensive, internationally recognized standards.
My engagement in the Joint ISO/TC 307 - ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27 WG directly supports this action. By actively participating in WG, I am bolstering Europe's representation and influence in shaping global standards in this transformative domain.
From a European perspective, this activity is pivotal. Europe seeks to not only embrace but lead in the adoption and implementation of Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies. By participating in the development of standards, we ensure that Europe's interests, values, and priorities are ingrained in the foundation of these technologies. This is paramount for bolstering Europe's digital sovereignty, fostering innovation, and ensuring that European businesses remain competitive on the global stage.
 

This fellowship supports my role as a convener of ISO TCC307 WG3. The priority is to organise the appropriate ballots and meetings to allow the experts to discuss and reach a consensus based on the comments received for the projects in ISO TC 307 WG3. Another priority is to complete the norms with the attendance list and verify that all experts in the meeting were duly registered in the portal and authorised to participate in the meetings.

One of the main challenges of this work has been overcoming the cultural barriers and language differences encountered during this period, particularly through various meetings and ad hoc meetings for the three projects, which are ongoing in preparation for the final stage to publication. 

The focus of my fellowship was to support the Integration of IoT, data interoperability, and standardisation practices into agricultural digital transformation frameworks.
The main gaps addressed through this fellowship were the lack of national policy alignment, weak participation in standardisation processes, and limited awareness of ICT interoperability frameworks in the Western Balkans, particularly Kosovo. Until recently, standardisation in agriculture was not part of the national digitalisation agenda, leaving many innovations fragmented and incompatible with EU frameworks.
In this context, I contributed to the national consultation and standardisation alignment process that shaped the Digital Agriculture Programme and Action Plan 2025–2028 in Kosovo, referencing European standards such as SAFE4Agri, ETSI SAREF4Agri, and ISO/IEC 30141.
Through the fellowship, I helped initiate dialogue between national authorities, FAO–AKIS, and regional organisations to begin integrating ICT standardisation principles into agriculture policy. 
The challenge was not only technical but also institutional and educational — to convince policymakers and agricultural associations of the value of adopting open European standards. As one of the first developers to successfully deploy smart irrigation IoT solutions in Kosovo, I used practical examples to demonstrate the benefits of standardisation and its role in improving interoperability, transparency, and SME innovation.
This fellowship therefore contributed to bridging the policy gap between innovation and regulation, ensuring that Western Balkan countries begin integrating EU ICT standardisation frameworks into their national digital-agriculture strategies.
 

In my fellowship i have been working to support the challenge of native integration of AI in the context of communication networks. While much success has been achieved in addressing network use cases with intelligent technologies, this has predominantly been applied in a case by case basis, with resulting outputs added to the networks in an ad-hoc way. Instead, AI-native networks are envisioned to accommodate the ubiquitous and native deployment of AI-based solutions in the network.
Through the work of the ITU-T Focus Group on AI-Native Networks, I contributed to the elaboration of use case, and associated requirements. I have also been supporting on the analysis of relevant key technologies that are required to realise the requirements derived from the use cases. 
 

This fellowship supported my work in updating to the IEEE 802.11 standard to prevent a recently discovered security weakness. This weakness is related to mesh networks, where, without extra defenses, an adversary could inject arbitrary packets into protected mesh networks. We designed a defense to mitigate this challenging gap. Unique about our created defense is that it is fully backward compatible, meaning each individual mesh client can independently enable this defense. As a proof-of-concept, we also implemented this defense in the Linux kernel to demonstrate practicality and confirm it prevents attacks.
 

My fellowship supports the development of a standardized framework for trustworthy, AI-native digital infrastructure by moving away from centralized, opaque architectures toward decentralized, composable, and transparent platforms. It addresses key challenges in current digital ecosystems, such as fragmentation, centralization, and lack of trust, with priorities including the development of AI-native composable infrastructure that embeds transparency, privacy, and accountability; the advancement of standards for federated AI, digital twin interoperability, and decentralized identity; and the resolution of gaps in trustworthy execution and governance to reduce Europe’s dependency on non-European platforms. The fellowship further seeks to enable federated, decentralized AI, ensure data sovereignty, and align composable infrastructure with European values of privacy, fairness, and transparency. These standardisation efforts are very significant in facilitating the timely adoption of emerging technologies with a global, interoperable standard for future AI infrastructure. 
 

This was a short-term fellowship supporting my convernorship. During the period, I contributed to the following activities: 
Ensuring the sustainability of the standards developed within the IEC/JTC1/SC7/WG19 working group,
Identifying existing difficulties and proposing solutions to resolve them,
Raising awareness among the various members of the working group of the need to use OSD in future standards development,
Coordinating actions with the WG19 secretary and reporting to the SC7 secretariat.
 

In the framework of this fellowship, I worked on a Technical Report (TR) that addresses critical gaps and challenges in the international standards landscape for digital content identification and binding mechanisms.
The absence of a common terminology across standardisation communities poses a major challenge. Different communities use inconsistent language when describing how content is connected with its metadata or other associated information. Whereas the C2PA initiative uses its own distinct terminology, other standardisation communities (e.g. W3C or OAIS) have different interpretations of what bindings mean. This terminological divergence leads to interoperability and mutual understanding barriers. The TR is establishing a comprehensive taxonomy that provides a neutral reference framework for multiple standardisation efforts, facilitating clearer communication across standardisation communities.
A gap the TR is addressing, is the limited comprehension of how binding mechanisms respond to content transformations. Digital content undergoes frequent alterations through compression, format conversion, and editing. Traditional identifier systems often fail when these changes occur, particularly when embedded metadata is stripped. The Working Group systematically analyses characteristics and limitations of different binding approaches, from cryptographic hashing to robust fingerprinting to watermarking techniques. This analysis will help stakeholders to make informed architectural decisions tailored to their specific requirements.
Moreover, the fellowship further contributes to positioning the recently published ISCC standard (ISO 24138:2024) within a broader global context. The TR serves as an educational resource, helping stakeholders understand how similarity-preserving identification methods complement established identification systems and address emerging needs in content provenance and authenticity verification, particularly relevant with current growth of AI-generated content.
 

This fellowship targets consumer-centric privacy by design in international standards work. Moreover, the Specific priorities, gaps and challenges identified are: 

• Consumer trust and privacy gaps: Fragmented practice and fast-moving online services erode user trust; legal principles (e.g., privacy by design, accountability) are not consistently translated into usable, testable requirements. 
• Stakeholder involvement: Consumer organisations and SMEs face high barriers to engage in lengthy, technical processes; national mirrors vary widely in how consumer voices are integrated. 
• Skills & usability deficits: Lack of shared patterns (consent, transparency UX, data control) and uneven digital skills hinder meaningful participation and compliant implementations. 
• Landscape fragmentation: Overlapping activities across SDOs make it hard for newcomers to find entry points, slowing delivery on e-privacy, safety, and transparency outcomes. 

How the fellowship addressed these

This fellowship supports my engagement as the chair of Chair of  ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 44. The group’s Strategic Business Plan (SBP) aims to respond the the challenges identified above in the following manners: 

• Th TC establishes an inclusive, modular work approach that supplements ISO 31700-1 with smaller, technology-/sector-specific deliverables—lowering thresholds for participation and speeding time-to-impact on safety, transparency, and e-privacy. 
• Low-threshold stakeholder mechanisms: Communications/outreach plan and light-touch consultation formats to systematically bring in consumer groups and civil society, aligned with ISO/COPOLCO and relevant liaisons. 
• SME: A stepwise, outcome-oriented approach envisaged in the SBP to accommodate different maturity levels and resource constraints, easing adoption by SMEs. 
• Early scoping of verticals: Following the September 2025 SC 44 meetings in Kunming, first preliminary work is being initiated with additional verticals to follow.