Deadline: 16 June 2020
The call “Nordic Health Data Research Projects on COVID-19” is a collaborative effort between the Swedish Research Council, Academy of Finland, Innovation Fund Denmark, Research Council of Norway, Icelandic Centre for Research (RANNÍS), Estonian Research Council, Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Latvia, and NordForsk.
Aims
The aim of the call is to generate new knowledge that can help in combating the COVID-19 pandemic by utilising existing health data and follow-up data collection through Nordic and Nordic-Estonian/Latvian research cooperation. Utilisation of one or several types of high-quality health data in a Nordic and Nordic-Estonian/Latvian context is central to the research to be funded under this call. Examples of such utilisation include, but are not limited to:
- Health data being utilised in order to add value to, support or follow-up already ongoing or planned clinical trials at the Nordic and Nordic-Estonian/Latvian level.
- Data being used to follow-up individuals who have been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus in terms of disease outcome, rehabilitation, side-effects, quality of life, and immunity in the longer run. Such data could include e.g. clinical or socioeconomic register data or statistics.
- Health data used to draw up scenarios or models for future pandemics, or to study zoonotic and biodiversity aspects.
- Determination of risk factors for severe medical complications (analysis of epidemiological, clinical, immunological, genetic markers).
Health data is here defined as data directly or indirectly linked to individuals, often by a personal identification number. This includes, but is not limited to:
- Register or electronic health record data
- Omics, imaging, laboratory or other health care data
- Expression patterns, biomarkers, mutations to be tested in a more clinical setting.
Funding Information
- Project funding will be available for the period 2020-2022. The total funding available under the call is approximately NOK 57 million.
- The Nordic funding allocated to the call is approximately NOK 50 million (appr. EUR 5 million) in total through a Nordic common pot. The Estonian funding allocated to the call is EUR 400 000. The Latvian funding allocated to the call is EUR 400 000.
Funding may be used to cover:
- Payroll and indirect expenses relating to researchers (including overheads);
- Researcher and post-doctoral positions;
- Funding of PhD salaries
- Coordination and administrative costs
- Research-related costs (such as data collection, access and analysis and publication charges);
- Project-related costs (such as collaboration activities with project partners and stakeholders, administrative expenses, and costs related to technical staff);
- Communication, dissemination and knowledge exchange activities;
- Travel/accommodation costs and mobility for the project partners;
- Travel/accommodation costs for other participants including stakeholders;
- FAIR data management
Eligibility Criteria
To be eligible for funding, the following conditions must be met:
- The research project must include partners from research-performing organisations in at least three Nordic countries, or two Nordic countries and Estonia and/or Latvia. Nordic countries are defined here as Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Åland Islands. In addition, the research project can include other public sector partners. Private organisations, such as companies and other undertakings, can participate as partners in the project, but are not eligible to receive financial support.
- The research project must include use of existing health data across countries (Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Norway, Sweden)
- Proposals must be submitted electronically through the NordForsk Application Portal by the call deadline.
- In order to promote interoperability of Nordic data, applications must put explicit emphasis on FAIR health data management. The projects must describe how data should be managed according to the FAIR principles and how to promote interoperability of Nordic-Latvian/Estonian data.
- All proposals must be written in English and follow the structure set out in the application form available on the NordForsk Application Portal.
- The host institution (Project Owner) for the research project must be a research-performing organisation* based in one of the countries co-funding the call: Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Norway, Sweden.
- The Project Leader must be a qualified researcher (minimum PhD) at the host institution.
- A researcher may only serve as a project leader for one application under this call. Research institutions may be affiliated with more than one application, and individual researchers may participate in several applications provided that total planned activities does not exceed one FTE.
- Projects funded under this call for proposals must publish with Open Access.
- The proposal must describe how it will secure coordination with other ongoing activities at the international, Nordic or national level in order not to overlap or put extra pressure on an already pressured health care system.
- The proposal must include a signed Letter of Commitment from each partner institution. Letters of Commitment must be signed by a person authorised to take on financial commitments on behalf of the institution for the entire duration of the project
* A research-performing organisation is a legal entity which is a university, university college, university hospital or a research institute, and is characterised by the following:
- A primary goal to independently conduct fundamental research and/or applied research, clinical research, and or research-based innovation where results are published.
- The entity may be private or public but must not pay out dividends from its activities.
- The entity must have significant production of academic, published research.
For more information, visit https://www.nordforsk.org/calls/nordic-health-data-research-projects-covid-19