About SPHN
The Swiss Personalized Health Network (SPHN) is an initiative of the Swiss Federal Government to establish a national data infrastructure for clinical and omics data for research.
The State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) allocated CHF 68 million to the SPHN initiative for the period 2017-2020, and CHF 66.9 million for 2021-2024. After 2024, the SPHN data infrastructure will be permantently integrated into the Swiss research landscape. For more information, read our mandate from the SERI and the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) for the first (2017-2020) and the second funding period (2021-2024).
Management
SPHN is managed by the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences (SAMS) and the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics. The National Steering Board is SPHN's decision-making body, and includes representatives from key clinical, research, and research support institutions. Various SPHN boards and working groups bring together the experience and know-how of (inter)national experts and institutions to strengthen collaborations and contribute to the progress of SPHN. This collaborative approach is paramount to the sustainability and scalability of this nationwide endeavor.
What we do
Our vision is to lay the foundations for a nationwide exchange of health-related data, enabling multidisciplinary personalized-health research to improve disease prevention and medical practice, and paving the way for the development of ground-breaking treatments.
To achieve this, SPHN has adopted a decentralized approach and builds a scalable network of data providers.
To make health data interoperable and accessible for research, we provide common standards for data formats, semantics, governance, and exchange. In addition, we develop processes and IT infrastructures that adhere to stringent ethical and legal requirements, for instance regarding data protection. Read more...
Achievements
Secure data processing: the BioMedIT network
SPHN has successfully established the BioMedIT network for processing sensitive data, and released a wide range of tools for researchers, from project planning to data recruitment, transfer, analysis, and reuse (see our latest factsheet).
Projects
SPHN has funded a wide range of projects that have (co-)developed infrastructures and used them for research. Four National Data Streams (runtime: 2022-2025) are lighting examples of what SPHN infrastructure can enable, now and in the future.
Collaborations with hospitals
SPHN drives infrastructure development in hospitals by funding the establishment of interoperable clinical data management systems.
Semantic interoperability framework
SPHN has established a universal exchange language for health-related data, which enables researchers to combine data from different sources by making data understandable for humans and machines. Read more...
Federated Query System
The SPHN Federated Query system allows authorized researchers to search for fully anonymized clinical information across all five university hospitals. Read more...
SPHN on YouTube
Watch Dr. Katrin Crameri's Key Note lecture from the SWAT4HLCS Conference in February 2023.
Dr. Katrin Crameri on how to lower computational boundaries for secure access and research with health-related data.
Finding patient data: The SPHN Federated Query System explained
Learn about FAIR principles and many other topics with the DCC Trainings on our YouTube channel