The theme of this year’s 3rd Health, Law, and Technology Symposium (HELT 2025) symposium was “One Health: Advancing Global Health through Law and Technology”. The One Health approach recognises the interconnection between human, animal, and environmental health. Therefore, One Health promotes collaborative, multi-disciplinary research acknowledging this deep interdependence to address global health challenges. The HELT event focused on contributions to the topic from legal, technological and ethical perspectives. 

The workshop organised by the University of Vienna was titled “One Health: Exploring the Effects of Contemporary Legal, Environmental, and Technological Challenges to Digital Health Research” and focused on three project-specific use cases. BBMRI.at (Biobanking and BioMolecular resources Research Infrastructure Austria) talked about how biobanks contribute to fulfilling the goals of the One Health concept and what challenges specific to biobanking can be identified in the secondary use of health data under the European Health Data Space (EHDS). COMMUTE (Comorbidity Mechanisms Utilized in Healthcare) explored how advancements in AI and Big Data Analytics can be harnessed to improve disease surveillance in a legally and ethically responsible manner, while SYNTHIA (Synthetic Data Generation framework for integrated validation of use cases and AI healthcare applications) looked at the topic of synthetic data and its role in transforming healthcare while preserving patient privacy. 

The workshop was moderated by Head of the Department Univ.-Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Forgó, who is also a member of the HELT Scientific Advisory Committee. After giving a brief introduction to the Department, prof. Forgó handed over to the team members who presented each of the projects. Afterwards, the workshop participants were asked to answer a number of questions pertaining to current legal and ethical challenges concerning the use of digital technologies, including AI, in healthcare research. These questions were later discussed in-depth during three breakout sessions where workshop participants could choose which of the three focus points they wanted to explore further. The workshop was concluded with a brief presentation of the discussion results.