Deadline: 20-Sep-22
The European Commission (EC) is offering grants for Access and integration of heterogeneous health data for improved healthcare in disease areas of high unmet public health need.
This topic aims to provide a scalable platform for the seamless integration or linkage of these diverse data at scale, and develop tools to allow the data to be used in clinical care, patient self-management and research in disease areas of high unmet public health.
Aims
Applicants should also aim to deliver the following:
- Public release of a set of minimum technical requirements for the developed platform/tools that includes interoperability, connectivity, data protection, cybersecurity and authentication/identification requirements that need to be met to allow the efficient integration of additional data from new devices/sensors/sources into the decision-support system after the project ends.
- Sustainable, ideally open-source tools that help ensure the quality and FAIRness of data at source (e.g., automated tools to help data entry, semantic coding, and data management in particular in registries and databases maintained by healthcare professionals/providers and research institutions) as well as methodologies, quality standards and metrics to assess data quality.
- Sustainable tools to increase cross-border and cross-sector interoperability of health data from the diverse sources. Ideally, these tools use open exchange formats and take into account relevant EU initiatives including the eHealth Digital Services Infrastructure (eHDSI) and the European Electronic Health Record Exchange Format (EEHRxF)
- Sustainability plan/business model to ensure the long-term impact of the project results.
Detail
For their proposed activities applicants should clearly identify a disease area of high unmet public health need1 taking into account comorbidities and/or functional status, and explain their choice with empirical evidence where possible.
- Develop / further develop a scalable, open platform for the seamless integration or linkage of data at scale from diverse public and private data sources relevant to the disease area selected. These data sources should, as a minimum, include all of the following: clinical trials; registries; patient safety data; routine clinical care; publicly available health insurance data; patient reported outcome and experience measures; and data generated by digital technologies such as sensors, wearables and mHealth apps. Preferably, projects should also integrate data that has not usually been used before for the purpose of medical decision-making.
- Develop / further develop tools focused on the needs of patients, leveraging these diverse data sources to support patient self-management and empower joint healthcare professional – patient decision making.
- Develop / further develop clinical (and other) decision support systems leveraging these diverse data sources to allow clinicians to deliver better healthcare services to patients in the disease area selected.
- Demonstrate the added value of the platform and tools compared to current approaches through a use case (study) applied to the disease area selected.
- Demonstrate the widespread applicability and scalability of the platform & tools using data sources from outside of the project
- Publish sufficient information, including access protocols, on the data that has been used in the project to facilitate long-term access and re-use, while ensuring compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation and other relevant European legislation.
Funding Information
The check will normally be done for the coordinator if the requested grant amount is equal to or greater than EUR 500 000, except for:
- public bodies (entities established as a public body under national law, including local, regional or national authorities) or international organisations; and
- cases where the individual requested grant amount is not more than EUR 60 000 (lowvalue grant).
Expected Outcome
Proposals under this topic should aim to deliver results that contribute to all of the following expected outcomes for a specified disease area of high unmet public health need:
- Researchers, including industry stakeholders, have long-term access to diverse data at scale, enabled by the linkage and integration of novel and cross-sectoral sources, including industry sources. If possible, some of these data should be able to be used for providing evidence to support regulatory decision-making.
- Researchers, including industry stakeholders, have long-term access to new tools that enable the integration and analysis of these data. If possible, some of these tools should be able to be used for providing evidence to support regulatory decision-making.
- Citizens, including patients, are given user-friendly, interoperable tools to access their own health data from different sources to support disease self-management and empower joint health care professional – patient decision making.
- Health care professionals and healthcare providers have access to integrated data from diverse sources and clinical (and other) decision support systems to deliver better healthcare services to patients and populations in the most suitable and efficient manner.
Eligibility Criteria
To be eligible for funding, applicants must be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.:
- the Member States of the European Union, including their outermost regions;
- the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) linked to the Member States;
- eligible non-EU countries:
- countries associated to Horizon Europe;
- low- and middle-income countries.
For more information, visit https://bit.ly/3bpEm6E