28 May 2021
Switzerland has a long tradition of high-quality cohort studies collecting a large variety of health-related data. In order to exploit their full potential, the further use of these cost-intensive data collections – in accordance with regulatory requirements - must be enabled and promoted.
As an important step in this direction, the Swiss Personalized Health Network (SPHN) started a collaboration with the Maelstrom research team to bring information about Swiss cohort data to an internationally renowned catalogue, in order to increase the findability and usability of these data sets. The Maelstrom catalogue is already serving the metadata dissemination of more than 240 studies from across the world, grouped into several international networks, and provides a user-friendly solution for data discovery.
In a pilot phase, meta-data of a first set of Swiss cohorts has been catalogued according to the Maelstrom schema, allowing researchers to search and identify cohorts that include data relevant for their research study. This important step will not only foster the reuse of data, but also promote new national and international research collaborations.
After completion of the pilot-phase, SPHN would now like to motivate further Swiss cohorts to bring their metadata to Maelstrom. SPHN has officially opened a call for letters of intent, to join the Maelstrom catalogue. After an evaluation process, the selected Swiss cohorts will be integrated into the SPHN Cohort Consortium Network. All interested cohorts are invited to send their application before the 30/06/2021. More information on the application procedure and eligibility criteria are available here.