Improving Health Research in EU through FAIR Data

The European Federation for Medical Informatics EFMI takes part in the beginning of the clinical demonstration of a European project to make the application of the FAIR principles effective and obtain a strong impact on health research and even on healthcare itself.

The fifth General Assembly of the FAIR4Health project held virtually on 16 and 17 March, ensuring the correct technical and scientific monitoring of the project to achieve its objectives.

FAIR4Health is a project funded by the H2020 Science with and for Society (SwafS-04-2018) call for proposals. It is carried out by 17 partners from 11 different countries and lasts 36 months, active from 1 December 2018 until 30 November 2021. FAIR4Health is encouraging the application of FAIR principles in data derived from publicly funded health research initiatives, so that they can be shared and reused within the European Union (EU) health research community, defining an effective EU- wide strategy for the use of FAIR in Health.

Currently, the project's clinical partners are finalising the preparation of the technological infrastructure and the deployment of the tools developed in FAIR4Health. In the coming weeks, the clinical demonstration foreseen in the project will be carried out, applying the FAIR principles to make research data findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable, and from a responsible vision. In this way, research and healthcare data (based on Digital Health Records) will be shared and reused in a secure, controlled, legally and ethically compliant ecosystem.

The fifth General Assembly, held virtually on 16 and 17 March and coordinated by the Andalusian Health Service (SAS), ensures the monitoring of the achievement of the objectives through technical and scientific meetings of all the tasks included in the work plan. One of the most important issues included is the training and formation of researchers during a demonstration of the operation of the tools developed in FAIR4Health through the use of a testing dataset from the Virgen del Rocío University Hospital, as part of the Andalusian Health Service.

In the coming weeks, the FAIR4Health tools will be used in the validation and clinical demonstration of the use cases designed in the project:

- Identification of multimorbidity patterns and correlation of polypharmacy in the risk of mortality in the elderly.

- Early prediction service of the risk of readmission in 30 days in patients with Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Besides, the General Assemblies promote the correct and efficient coordination between the different partners of the FAIR4Health Consortium, led by the Andalusian Health Service (Spain), and made up of the following partners: Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud (Spain), Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (Spain), Atos Spain SA (Spain), University for Health Sciences, Medical Informatics and Technology (Austria), HL7 Foundation (Belgium), Institut für Medizinische Informatik, Statistik und Epidemiologie - Universität Leipzig KöR (Germany), Academic Medical Center of University of Amsterdam (Netherlands), Université de Genève (Switzerland), Peter L. Reichertz Institute for Medical Informatics, University of Braunschweig (Germany), Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Italy), European Federation of Medical Informatics (Switzerland), Digital Curation Centre from University of Edinburgh (United Kingdom), Garrigues (Spain), Software Research and Development Consultancy (Turkey), University of Porto (Portugal), and the Institute of Pulmonary Diseases of Vojvodine (Serbia).

The FAIR4Health consortium has a website https://www.fair4health.eu/ and social media profiles @Fair4Health where anyone can consult all the information on the project.

FAIR4Health is funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement number 824666.