Over the past eight years, the collaborative efforts of the Swiss Personalized Health Network (SPHN) initiative and the Personalized Health and Related Technologies (PHRT) program have laid important groundwork for advancing personalized health research. The two initiatives contributed to the development, implementation and validation of coordinated data infrastructures in order to make health-relevant data interoperable and shareable for research in Switzerland.
Reaching the end of the initiatives by the end of 2024, we warmly invite you to attend the "Data for Health" symposium in Bern on 31 October to discover the achievements and envision the future Swiss health research data ecosystem. The event will bring together stakeholders of the health care and research data ecosystem, including industry leaders and political representatives, patients, international experts and researchers, to discuss and foster personalized health research and care in Switzerland.
Welcome and Opening Prof. Urs Frey, Chair SPHN National Steering Board; Prof. Christian Wolfrum, Chair PHRT Strategic Committee
09:20
Keynote Prof. Russ Altmann, Stanford University, USA
09:45
Infrastructure achievements Dr. Thomas Geiger, Managing Director SPHN, Prof. Bernd Wollscheid, Chairman PHRT Executive Committee
10:10
Industry perspective Dr. med. Katharina Gasser, General Manager Roche Pharma Switzerland
10:30
Coffee Break
10:50
How to get the data out of the silos Panel discussion with: Prof. Murielle Bochud (Unisanté), Prof. Jörg Goldhahn (ETHZ), Dr. Elke Mittendorf (USZ), Dr. Lukas Engelberger (GDK)
11:50
Lunch
13:00
Ateliers
Interactive sessions, upon registration (see floor plan)
Short Talks
With experts from the SPHN and PHRT initiatives and infrastructures (Arena)
14:35
Coffee Break
15:00
Shared benefits of research, healthcare and quality: how to bridge the gap Talk with Prof. Martina Hirayama, State Secretary SERI and Anne Lévy, Director FOPH
15:35
Understanding patients' expectations in personalized health Panel discussion with: David Haerry (Positivrat), Dr. Jasmin Barman-Aksözen (UZH), Dr. Olivier Menzel (Pro Raris), Larisa Aragon (Executive Board Member EUPATI)
16:15
Coffee Break
16:40
Parallel Session 1, FAIR health data for research Szenario
Parallel session 2, FAIR health data for healthcare Arena
Open Research Data in health Prof. Antoine Geissbühler (HUG)
Overview on the DigiSanté program Dr. Katrin Crameri (FOPH)
17:05
Perspective from data science Prof. Catherine Jutzeler (ETHZ, SIB)
Perspective from hospital ICT Pierre-François Regamey (CHUV)
17:20
A clinical researcher’s perspective Prof. Olivier Michielin (HUG, SIB)
Clinical impact of FAIR health data for Personalized Medicine Prof. Dr. Viola Heinzelmann (USB)
17:45
Outlook on SPHN 2025-2028 Prof. Urs Frey
17:55
Closing remarks Prof. Urs Frey, Prof. Bernd Wollscheid
18:00
Apéro
The day will be moderated by Karin Frei.
Ateliers
Ateliers
These interactive sessions take place from 13:00 - 14:35. Each session takes 25 minutes and is repeated three times. This schedule allows you to participate in up to three different Ateliers. Please note that space is limited and kindly reserve your spot via the email you received with the registration.
Atelier 1 - Infections in Intensive Care Units: Lessons learned in the use of clinical routine data in a multi-centre study
By Adrian Egli & Catherine Jutzeler Using clinical routine data in a multi-centre study presents both opportunities and challenges. In this atelier by the National Data Streams project IICU, we will share the lessons learned from collecting and analyzing intensive care unit data from all five university hospitals in Switzerland. The interactive format encourages participants to exchange experiences and discuss common challenges in handling such data. By fostering this collaborative discussion, the goal is to identify best practices, improve data quality and harmonization, and enhance the overall effectiveness of multi-centre studies. Ultimately, we aim to build a shared understanding of how to overcome obstacles in using clinical routine data for research.
Atelier 2 - Oncology: The Swiss Personalized Oncology National Data Stream (SPO-NDS) and Its Impact on Patient Care
By Olivier Michielin & Bernd Bodenmiller The Swiss Personalized Oncology National Data Stream (SPO-NDS) is dedicated to advancing precision oncology by delivering FAIR clinical and advanced omics data to molecular tumor boards at both local and national levels. This initiative offers groundbreaking decision support for personalized therapies. In this session, we will introduce you to the project’s core objectives and anticipated outcomes. We will also guide you through the journey of a typical patient within the study, exploring how their personalized omics data is analyzed and discussed at a molecular tumor board, ultimately leading to treatment recommendations with a direct impact on patient care.
Atelier 3 - Pediatrics: A poster walk exploring insights of SwissPedHealth, a national pediatric data stream
By SwissPedHealth consortium members SwissPedHealth is a national pediatric data stream that aims to securely leverage daily routine data from children’s hospitals for research and analysis, ultimately improving pediatric healthcare. Through this atelier in form of a poster walk you will be able to interact with our team and discover the highlights of SwissPedHealth. These will include key infrastructure and governance aspects, the relevance for child health of our nested projects on obesity, cancer, lung function and antibiotics, exciting preliminary findings from the lighthouse project on the use of AI and bioinformatic pipelines to improve rare diseases detection, and news from our work together with families through focus groups and interviews on bioethical aspects.
Atelier 4 - Low Value of Care: Unlocking research potential with LUCID NDS data - a participatory approach
By Marie Méan, Oksana Riba and LUCID team members
LUCID (Low valUe of Care in Medical hospitalIzeD patients) is a pioneering National Data Stream project aimed at studying the quality of care in Swiss university hospitals. By integrating routine hospital data with patient-reported outcomes (PROs), LUCID creates a dynamic and comprehensive dataset ripe for innovative research on quality of care. This atelier invites you to collaborate in identifying novel research opportunities. How can we leverage this rich data to revolutionize healthcare delivery, optimize resource allocation, avoid waste of care or personalize treatment strategies?
Atelier 5 - Genomics: No room for precision medicine in the land of precision watches? Is Switzerland shunning genomic medicine?
By Didier Trono Advanced genomics stands to revolutionize health management and the practice of medicine by identifying individual genetic risks, predicting a person’s response to drugs, allowing the stratification of patients notably in cancer therapy, and many other applications with a profound impact on the prevention, diagnostic and treatment of diseases. Countries all over the world have started sequencing hundreds of thousands of individual genomes to serve as basis for their personalized health/precision medicine programs, already making a number of health-relevant discoveries as a by-product. Switzerland still lacks a coherent, sustainable, government-supported plan to join this effort. Is it a matter of concern?
Atelier 6 - Data Governance: Putting a price tag on data
By Julia Maurer & ELSI Team
High-quality data infrastructures are critical to advancing research, but they come at a significant cost - requiring labor-intensive operations and highly skilled personnel. Yet it is still unclear what sustainable business models could drive data infrastructures to reduce their reliance on public funding. For Swiss institutions, the concept of treating data as a 'product' available as a fee-based service, is a relatively new idea that comes with a host of unresolved questions. In this session, we invite participants to explore the ethical, legal and governance-related implications of this model. Key questions we will address include: Is it part of the research mandate of a (university) hospital to provide data services for external researchers? Can data providing hospitals sufficiently ensure patients’ privacy and public trust in such a setting? What are the implications of such an approach for researchers, industry partners, hospital representatives and patients?
Atelier 7 - Ethics: Ethical challenges in genomic research
By Susanne Driessen
The sharing of genomic data across institutional and national borders offers unprecedented opportunities to advance personalized medicine. However, it also poses significant ethical and societal challenges, particularly with regard to consent, privacy, and public engagement. Internationally, these challenges have been discussed by various institutions, but in Switzerland a nationally harmonized understanding and solutions are still lacking. This session will introduce participants to an ethical framework developed by the SPHN ELSI advisory group to facilitate a consistent approach to practical ethical issues in genomic data sharing in Switzerland. Participants will share experiences and gain a clearer understanding of ethical, legal and social issues in generating and sharing of genomic data.
Short Talks
Short Talks
Short-Talk Session 1, 13:00 - 13:25
Data Integration Across Clinical Routine Data, Omics Data, and Beyond: The SPHN Semantic Interoperability Framework
By Sabine Oesterle
This talk will delve into the crucial role of data integration in advancing healthcare research, with a focus on harmonizing diverse datasets such as clinical routine data, omics data (genomics, proteomics, etc.), and other biomedical sources. We will introduce the SPHN Schema, a comprehensive blueprint that ensures seamless semantic interoperability across various domains. The presentation will also highlight the SPHN Toolstack, a powerful suite of tools designed to facilitate the creation of knowledge graphs, which enhance data connectivity, enable complex queries, and drive discovery.
Integration, Operation and Usage of the SPHN Toolset in a University Hospital
By Patrick Hirschi
Showcase the integration, operation, and practical usage of the SPHN toolset within the University Hospital of Zurich. We'll explore how the toolset was seamlessly integrated into our existing systems, the challenges we encountered, and discuss the overall impact of SPHN on our data ecosystem.
Short-Talk Session 2, 13:35 - 14:00
BioMedIT Network: Swiss federation of Trusted Research Environments for sensitive data management
By Shubham Kapoor
In this talk, we explore the BioMedIT network, Switzerland’s secure IT infrastructure for responsible processing of sensitive data. Coordinated by SPHN-DCC, the BioMedIT network extends across three legally independent scientific IT platforms at ETH Zurich, the University of Basel, and the University of Lausanne. Launched in 2017 as an integral part of the Swiss Personalized Health Network (SPHN) initiative, the network currently supports over 60 national and international health-related research projects, spanning areas such as infection prediction and precision oncology.
Setting up a Swiss federated European Genome-Phenome Archive (fEGA)
Mark Ibberson
Federated European Genome-phenome Archive (FEGA) is a secure, federated infrastructure that enables the sharing, management, and analysis of sensitive genomic and phenotypic data across multiple European nodes, while maintaining strict compliance with GDPR data protection regulations. Each country hosts its own node, allowing data to remain under national jurisdiction while still participating in pan-European research efforts. This talk will focus on the process of setting up a FEGA node for Switzerland, covering the goals, current status and challenges in this ambitious project supporting Switzerland’s active role in federated genomic research across Europe.
Short-Talk Session 3, 14:10 - 14:35
From Spins to Pictures to Digital Organs - the PHRT Deep Data Collection Initiative
Sebastian Kozerke
In this presentation, we will highlight the value and importance of deep imaging data collected in the normal population. We will show the role of MR image-guided digital organs for inferring sub-voxel information from in-vivo measurements and will sketch a future scenario of patient-specific in-silico diagnostics and prediction.
SMOC - An Engine for Multi-Omics Data Generation in Personalized Health
Sandra Goetze
Ever wondered how our bodies function, how diseases arise, and how we might tailor treatments to each individual's unique needs? The ETH PHRT Swiss Multi-omics Center (SMOC) is on a mission to unravel these intricate biological mysteries and pave the way for a healthier future.
Keynote speakers
Dr. Martina Hirayama Head of the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) at Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research
Martina Hirayama studied Chemistry at ETH Zurich, the University of Fribourg, and Imperial College London, earning a doctorate in technical sciences from ETH Zurich, where she also pursued postgraduate studies in Business Economics. She led the Polymer Chemistry Group at ETH Zurich and co-founded a start-up in coating technologies, serving as CEO until 2008. At ZHAW, she lectured in Industrial Chemistry, developed the field of polymer materials, and led the Institute of Materials and Process Engineering. From 2011 to 2018, she was Director of the ZHAW School of Engineering and held leadership roles in the Federal Institute of Metrology, Innosuisse, and other key organizations. Since 2019 Prof. Dr. Hirayama has been head of the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation.
Russ Biagio Altman is the Kenneth Fong Professor of Bioengineering, Genetics, Medicine, Biomedical Data Science and (by courtesy) Computer Science) and past chairman of the Bioengineering Department at Stanford University. His primary research interests are in the application of computing (AI, data science and informatics) to problems relevant to medicine. He is particularly interested in methods for understanding drug action at molecular, cellular, organism and population levels. Russ Biagio Altman is the Kenneth Fong Professor of Bioengineering, Genetics, Medicine, Biomedical Data Science and (by courtesy) Computer Science) and past chairman of the Bioengineering Department at Stanford University. His primary research interests are in the application of computing (AI, data science and informatics) to problems relevant to medicine. He is particularly interested in methods for understanding drug action at molecular, cellular, organism and population levels. Russ is also the chairperson of the SPHN International Advisory Board.
Antoine Geissbühler is an internist and specialist in medical informatics. A full professor since 2006, he is also Director of the HUG Innovation Centre and Head of the Division of e-Health and Telemedicine, which has been designed as a WHO collaborating centre. His research focuses on the design and application of new IT tools in the medical field. In particular, he helped implement Switzerland's e-health strategy and developed the RAFT project, a major telemedicine network linking hundreds of healthcare professionals in 20 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Antoine is also the chairperson of the SPHN National Advisory Board and the ORD Taskforce Health and Life Science Data.
Anne Lévy
Director-General of the Federal Office of Public Health FOPH (since 2020)
Lic. sc. pol. degree in political science (University of Lausanne), Executive MBA (University of Fribourg)
Anne Lévy coordinates the FOPH’s business with the FDHA’s planning. She assures representation of the FOPH, and in some cases the FDHA, in interdepartmental working groups and on parliamentary committees and international bodies. In addition, Anne Lévy heads and plans healthcare reform projects at the national level.
2015–20 CEO, University Psychiatric Clinics, Basel | 2009–15 Head of Health Protection, Basel-Stadt Department of Health, Basel | 2004–09 Head of Alcohol and Tobacco Section, FOPH, Bern| 2003–04 Technical Assistant to the Assistant Director and Head of the Main Unit Substance Abuse and AIDS, FOPH, Bern | 2001–03 Research Associate, Head of Coordination and Service Platform for Addiction, FOPH, Bern | 2000 Project Manager, United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), New York
Dr. med. Katharina Gasser
General Manager of Roche Pharma Switzerland
Dr. med. Katharina Gasser studied medicine with a specialization in pharmaceutical medicine. She gained practical experience as a doctor in internal medicine and geriatrics and then moved into the healthcare industry, where she worked for many years in various management positions in Switzerland and around the world. Since September 2022 she is the General Manager of Roche Pharma Switzerland.
Dr. Katrin Crameri Co-head DigiSanté
Federal Department of Home Affairs and co-head of the Digital Transformation division at the Federal Office of Public Health since June 2024. She studied molecular biology in Tübingen, Berlin, and New York, holds a PhD in neuroscience and a Master of Public Health. From 2019 to May 2024, Katrin served as Director of Personalized Health Informatics at the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, where she led SPHN’s Data Coordination Center and the BioMedIT project. She is passionate about driving digital transformation in healthcare and dedicated to advancing better research for better health.
Arrival by public transport: Take tram line no 9 from Bern train station (Kante B, direction of Bern Wankdorf) to the station Kursaal. Arrival by car: Use "Kursaal Parking" as the address for your navigation system / Google Maps. The hotel's own underground parking garage provides 240 parking spaces.
Contact
For any questions concerning the symposium please contact:
Students, PhDs and postdocs can attend the event free of charge.
When registering, please select the appropriate category. The fee has to be paid by electronic payment. We do not issue bills. Sales are final and cannot be canceled and/or reimbursed.
