HYGEIA Hospital
HYGEIA Hospital, a member of Hellenic Healthcare Group (HHG), is one of the largest private hospitals in Greece, providing comprehensive healthcare services across a wide range of medical specialties. The hospital combines advanced clinical expertise, state-of-the-art infrastructure, and cutting-edge medical technologies to deliver high-quality patient care in both primary and secondary healthcare settings.
HYGEIA is a leading center for breast cancer screening, diagnosis, and treatment in Greece, offering a multidisciplinary approach that ensures optimal diagnostic and therapeutic outcomes. The Breast Center is a member of the Breast Cancer Centers Network (BCCN) and operates in accordance with international best practices and established clinical guidelines, including those of EUSOBI (European Society of Breast Imaging) and EUSOMA (European Society of Breast Cancer Specialists).
The Breast Imaging Department is equipped with advanced imaging technologies, including Digital Breast Tomosynthesis, Full-Field Digital Mammography systems with Contrast-Enhanced Mammography capabilities, high-resolution ultrasound systems, and 3 Tesla Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanners. These technologies support accurate and early detection of breast cancer while enabling personalized patient management.
HYGEIA Hospital has a strong commitment to research, innovation, and continuous medical education, maintaining close collaborations with academic and research institutions in Greece and internationally. Advanced digital health solutions and Artificial Intelligence technologies are increasingly being integrated into clinical practice, particularly in Radiology and Oncology, to enhance diagnostic accuracy, optimize workflows, and support precision medicine approaches.
Our mission is to provide the highest standard of healthcare by combining clinical excellence, innovative technologies, and patient-centered care, ensuring the best possible outcomes for every patient.”
Role in the project
MHA will be the Greek member of the ODELIA’s pan-European AI network. MHA will deploy and test the MVP solution for SL. MHA will provide the initial exams for the training of the local models and will assist in the comparison of locally trained AI models with a swarm-trained AI model. MHA will demonstrate the SL prototype in an operational environment and will involve more breast cancer centers of the HHG. Moreover, MHA will provide user requirements for a lightweight radiological image viewer and test its useability at clinical level. In addition, MHA will disseminate results to relevant target groups ensuring visibility in private healthcare sector.
Alexandra Athanasiou
Dr Alexandra Athanasiou, MD, MSc, is Head of Breast Imaging Department and Scientific Director of Breast Cancer Center at HYGEIA Hospital, Athens, Greece. She received her MD degree from the University of Athens and completed her residency in Radiology at the University Hospital of Heraklion. She obtained her sub-specialization in Breast and Oncologic Imaging in Paris, France, where she was board-certified in 2007. Parallel to her clinical work, she was an active researcher, being the Principal Investigator in two multicenter clinical trials and co-investigator in six multicenter clinical trials. Her research is focused on novel imaging modalities with emphasis on potential imaging biomarkers and on Artificial Intelligence in Breast Imaging.
Dr Athanasiou holds a Master’s degree in Bio-Engineering with special focus on Physics of Ultrasound from the ESPCI (Ecole Supérieure de Physique et De Chimie, Institut Langevin, Paris France) and an Executive Certificate of Artificial Intelligence in Health Care from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Dr Athanasiou is member of the Executive Board of EUSOBI since 2019 and was appointed Chairperson of EUSOBI International Relations Committee in 2022. She is the author of five book chapters, 46 indexed articles and a regular speaker in national and international courses and conferences.
Petros Papachristou
Dr Petros Papachristou is the Chief Information Officer for the Hellenic Healthcare Group with several hospitals and diagnostic centers in Greece and Cyprus among them the HYGEIA Hospital. He holds an Meng degree in Production & Management Engineering from the University of Crete and a PhD in Computer Vision and AI from the Electrical & Electronic Engineering, University of Surrey. He worked as a researcher for 3 years at the University of Surrey Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing, and as a Special Scientist for Satellite Remote Sensing at St. Petersburg State Polytechnical University, Russia. From 1996 to 1999, he worked as Director of the Geographic Information System Division at Epsilon, while from 1999 to 2010, he worked as Research & Technology Director at ATKOSoft, specializing in national and international medical IT, telemedicine and social security projects. From 2011 to now, he served as the C.I.O. at HYGEIA Group and now the HHG Group.
Paul-Christophe Varoutas
Paul-Christophe Varoutas is a pluri-disciplinary project engineer, with experience in healthcare and finance. He has a long experiece in medical and biomedical informatics, providing innovative software solutions that integrate medicine, biology, artificial intelligence, big data, linguistics, cognitive ergonomics etc, with an accent on efficient healthcare impact on the patients, wide acceptance of the tools by the healthcare personnel, as well as on financial impact for the hosting healthcare agencies. He holds a BSc in Molecular Biology and Genetics, as well as a MSc in Molecular and Cellular Genetics from the Université Paris XI. He is currently preparing an Executive Certificate in Big Data Project Management at the Ecole CentraleSupélec. While he was responsible for the Medical Infocentre at the Institut Curie Hospital in Paris, France, his work on Prométhée, a pioneer biomedical search engine integrated with Elios, the internal EHR system, was selected and awarded by the European Commission, during the eHealth Impact Study. He has served as an expert for the European Comission on healcare policy issues.