6G-Path Open Call 2
PATHSHIELD
Pioneering Beyond 5G Cybersecurity for Hospital Edge with AI-Native Intrusion Detection
>> Problem space
What this project addresses.
Hospitals are early adopters of clinical 6G — connected ICU monitors, infusion pumps, imaging equipment and bedside telemetry all share the same edge network as the wards around them. That network now carries life-critical data alongside ordinary administrative traffic, which means an intrusion at the hospital edge no longer just leaks records. It can change what a clinician sees on a monitor.
The threat model PATHSHIELD works against is specific: lateral movement from a compromised peripheral device, tampering with ICU telemetry streams in transit, and quiet reconnaissance against clinical 6G slices that conventional IT-focused tooling does not catch.
The framing the consortium has settled on borrows from immunology — a “reflex” layer that reacts at the network edge in milliseconds, and an “immune-system” layer that learns from each incident across the hospital’s clinical fabric. That vocabulary belongs to the project itself, not to marketing.
>> Approach
What we’re building.
PATHSHIELD is an AI-native intrusion-detection fabric for the clinical edge. The “reflex” layer runs close to the device, watching protocol-level behaviour on the hospital’s 6G slice and isolating a peripheral the moment its traffic stops looking like itself. The “immune” layer sits one step deeper, correlating signals across wards and learning which weak patterns actually became incidents.
The work is being validated on the Fraunhofer FOKUS 6G testbed and against clinical-edge scenarios scoped with Charité Berlin. That gives the consortium two things at once: a 6G network operator with real protocol coverage, and a university hospital that can frame what an ICU clinician actually needs the system to do when an alarm fires at three in the morning.
Output is being staged as deliverables under the 6G-Path Open Call 2 framework — technical reports, validation traces from the testbeds, and the model components themselves, released as the consortium clears them.
>> Consortium
Who we’re building this with.
- Fraunhofer FOKUS
- Charité Berlin
PATHSHIELD runs as a Horizon Europe consortium under the 6G-Path Open Call 2 framework — each partner contributes a defined work package against a shared programme deliverable schedule.
>> Outputs
Where to find the work.
Programme deliverables
Technical reports and validation traces published as the consortium clears them on the 6G-Path Open Call 2 site.
Programme sitePeer-reviewed publications
Publication slot 1 — target IEEE journal, expected Q3 2026. Additional slots will be linked here as submissions clear review.
Open-source artifacts
Code repositories publish on GitHub as deliverables clear the consortium release process.
Conference presentations
Conference presentations will be listed here as they’re confirmed.
Horizon Europe operates under open-publication obligations; artifacts are released as each consortium-internal review and IP check completes.
>> Programme
About the programme.
6G-Path is a Horizon Europe project under the cluster on next-generation networks, funding open-call experiments that pressure-test 6G architectures across live European testbeds. Open Call 2 specifically targets security, trust and clinical-edge use cases.
Visit the 6G-Path Open Call 2 site>> Want to collaborate?
Reach the research team.
If you’re a programme officer, a research partner, or a security architect working on clinical-edge networks, we’d like to hear from you.