Personalized Health Research

Demonstrator projects use the established SPHN infrastructures, processes, and frameworks to demonstrate utility and fit-for-purpose of those SPHN ecosystem elements and to identify remaining gaps. Demonstrator projects in the following two areas are eligible for funding:

1. Infrastructure components: Operational application (in daily practice) or transferability (to another setting) of infrastructure components, systems or tools developed locally along the goals of SPHN or as part of SPHN-funded projects;
2. Routine healthcare data: Leveraging the potential and validating the use of routine healthcare data from the university hospitals' Clinical Data Warehouses (CDW) for translational and clinical research projects, clinical trials (proof-of-principle studies), or other real-world use cases;

Importantly Demonstrator projects shall not build new infrastructure from scratch, but consolidate what has been started, complement missing links, and assess applicability and impact on clinical decision making and personalized health research.

Interested applicants will need to submit their proposals by the 31^st August 2022, including commitment letters from all host institutions and commitment letters from all data and service providers. To receive the commitment letter from the University of Basel and university hospitals please enter the required information in the Grants Tool (www.grants.unibas.ch – application form “SPHN Demonstrator Projects 2022”).To receive the commitment letters from the data and service providers in Basel please get in touch with the responsible person for CDW data requests (bram.stieltjes@usb.ch) and sciCORE BioMedIT node (thierry.sengstag@unibas.ch) as soon as possible, but no later than 17 August, to clarify requirements and resources.

For any question, please contact cristina.golfieri@unibas.ch.

For more information on the call, including all necessary documents for applicants, please visit the dedicated Call for Demonstrator projects page.

In 2021, SPHN and PHRT jointly launched the call for “National Data Streams” (NDS). After a two-step evaluation procedure, 4 NDS projects have been selected for funding. Each of them comprises a Switzerland-wide multidisciplinary consortium that invests in the development of a sustainable data infrastructure for high-end data-driven and personalized health research.

NDS will constitute central pillars of the SPHN health data ecosystem and the PHRT research platforms. In the long term, they shall serve as models and crystallization points for future research programs and clinical applications of personalized health. NDS include clinical, analytical (such as multi-omics) and other data that will be enriched and made available to the research community. In addition, all NDS include patient and public involvement (PPI) in their projects.

The following 4 NDS projects will start in summer 2022:

• Personalized, data-driven prediction and assessment of infection-related outcomes in Swiss ICUs (IICU)
  Main PIs: Prof. Adrian Egli (USB) & Prof. Karsten Borgwardt (ETHZ)
  Basel co-PIs: Prof. Martin Siegemund (USB), Prof. Manuel Battegay (USB)
• Swiss Personalized Oncology National Data Stream (SPO-NDS)
  Main PIs: Prof. Olivier Michielin (CHUV) & Prof. Bernd Bodenmiller (ETHZ)
  Basel co-PIs: Prof. Mohamed Bentires-Alj (Unibas), Dr. Bram Stieltjes (USB)
• Pediatric personalized research network Switzerland (SwissPedHealth) – a Joint Pediatric National Data Stream
  Main PIs: Prof. Luregn Schlapbach (University Children’s Hospital Zurich) & Prof. Julia Vogt (ETHZ)
  Basel co-PIs: PD Dr. Julia Bielicki (UKBB), Prof. Sven Schulzke (UKBB)
• LUCID, Low Value of Care in Hospitalized Patients, a National Data Stream on Quality of Care in Swiss university hospitals
  Main PIs: Dr. Marie Méan (CHUV) & Dr. Guillaume Obozinski (EPFL)
  Basel co-PIs: Prof. Stefano Bassetti (USB), Dr. Bram Stieltjes (USB), Dr. Florian Rüter (USB)

Each NDS project will receive up to CHF 5 million and have a runtime of 3 years. SPHN funding requires matching funds from the participating institutions.

The Grants Office would like to congratulate all the Basel PIs!