As one of Luxembourg’s early strategic GAIA-X project, the national GAIA-X coordinator paid a visit to his Japanese counterpart. This visit could lead to a much closer collaboration between Luxembourg and Japan.
Jean-Michel Gaudron
During this visit to Tokyo, Luxinnovation was able to present Luxembourg's GAIA-X strategy to various stakeholders in Japan. The agency explored Japan's strategy regarding data spaces and data sharing, as well as concrete projects between Japan and Europe.
Since 2022, a collaboration has been active between Data Society Alliance Japan and GAIA-X within the DATA-EX alliance.. Several international projects are underway, such as Catena-X, a flagship project designed to regulate data exchange among the automotive industry and it’s suppliers with vivid participation of German and Japanese player. It is considered one of the biggest successes among European GAIA-X projects.
Noboru Koshizuka, the GAIA-X coordinator for Japan, emphasized the need for standards to securely exchange data between Japan and Europe. Without blindly following European initiatives regarding data exchange regulation between Europe and third countries, Mr Koshizuka emphasised that Japan wants to be a sovereign partner for the continent.
"GAIA-X is an open community where all members, regardless of their geographical origin, can contribute to its development with a view to creating an environment in which data can be shared and stored under the control of the owners and users of the data," responded Ralf Hustadt, Special Advisor on Digitalisation, Data Economy, and GAIA-X at Luxinnovation. "This will not only benefit collaboration between nations but also foster the potential creation of future standards."
Asai Kohataro, Data Society Alliance, Vice President - Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers & Technical Adviser at Mitsubishi Electric, Corporate R&D, highlighted Japan's current efforts in collaborating on data-sharing projects. He suggested partnering by leveraging testbeds built in Japan for this purpose, with the support of NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, the Japanese telecommunications holding company headquartered in Tokyo, one of the biggest telecommunications company in the world in terms of revenue). This includes, for example, the implementation of the Eclipse Database Connector for secure data exchange.
In addition to the fruitful discussions held at the University of Tokyo, Luxinnovation also had the opportunity to visit the NTT R&D Forum 2023 in the Japanese capital. The forum focused on the elemental technologies of IOWN (Innovative Optical and Wireless Network), launched in March of this year, as well as generative AI technology.
As part of this event, a meeting took place with Akira Sakaino and Koki Mitani, who are responsible for efforts related to data spaces at the Software Innovation Center of NTT. NTT is putting impressive efforts into data spaces and secure data exchange, including hardware encryption to build a secure testbed infrastructure in Japan and another testbed in Germany. Finally, a meeting at the NTT Data Japan headquarters with Masaru Dobashi and Taichi Imura, responsible for implementing the vision of research and development into practice, concluded this positive visit to Japan.
"The conclusion of the days in Tokyo was a solid first step into a tight collaboration between the efforts of the Gaia-X Hub Luxembourg, LXDS4H, DATA-EX, the University of Tokyo, NTT Data Japan, and NTT Research Inc., where the parties are aiming to share resources and testbeds between Japan and Luxembourg," summarised Mr Hustadt. The Lux-XDataSpace4Health (LXDS4H) project was recently selected by the Luxembourg Ministry of the Economy to represent Luxembourg as a GAIA-X flagship project in Europe.
The goal of the LXDS4H project is to become the technical foundation for secure and regulated health data exchange in Luxembourg and beyond, both in Europe and with third countries. It addresses regulatory requirements for secure data exchange, establishes the compliant foundation for the monetisation of health data, and enables new possibilities for medical treatment by leveraging data and AI.
GAIA-X will not only benefit collaboration between nations but also foster the potential creation of future standards.
A technological alliance has formed in Luxembourg around this project with the Robert Schuman Hospital, the Luxembourg Institute of Health (in collaboration with the Luxembourg hospital CHL, the National Institute of Cancer, and the National Centre for Translational Cancer Research), Agence eSante, the Luxembourg National Data Service, and NTT Data Inc.
The project will result in a use case-driven data space platform that facilitates the easy deployment of new healthcare use cases in Luxembourg and beyond. This project has already begun the certification process to become a GAIA-X flagship project. It was highlighted on the European stage at the GAIA-X Summit on 9-10 November 2023, in Alicante, and it will be featured at the Schengen-X Event on 4 December in Luxembourg.
"We are proud that NTT in Luxembourg could support in building a bridge between Japan and Luxembourg,” says Mr Hustadt. “The collaboration on data spaces and Gaia-X between the two countries certainly becomes a milestone for the collaboration between Luxembourg and Japan. LXDS4H, our flagship project in Luxembourg, will certainly benefit from this collaboration."
