Periodic Reporting for period 3 - euCanSHare (An EU-Canada joint infrastructure for next-generation multi-Study Heart research)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2021-12-01 al 2023-05-31
For a long time, cardiovascular research had been conducted based on single cohorts such as the well-known Framingham Heart Study. However, single studies are limited to specific populations, geographical areas and even data types. Consequently, multi-cohort approaches have been proposed, both in Europe and in Canada to allow researchers to investigate heterogeneous determinants and biomarkers of CVD in more comprehensive samples, and to uncover new biomedical knowledge with increased sample size, geographical coverage, and data richness. However, these initiatives did not develop the much-needed IT infrastructures to enable the re-use of the data beyond the duration of the funded projects.
The main challenges are: 1) there are no catalogues to enable easy access to information on available data, their precise characteristics and potential for cardiovascular research studies; 2) access request mechanisms remain highly traditional, manual and lengthy, which greatly reduce the efficiency in data-driven biomedical research; 3) re-usability of the data for cardiovascular personalised medicine is often reduced when the funding is terminated; 4) major ethical and legal concerns that need to be addressed to enable responsible data sharing and analysis with a high level of data protection and security.
The main objective of euCanSHare is to build a multi-centre big data platform for cardiovascular research that addresses the challenges listed above. This user-friendly platform will provide several functionalities that will enable easy access to information on available data, that will facilitate the process of requesting and granting access to the data, as well as the process of building data analysis workflows to execute the research studies, while complying to the highest ethical and legal standards of data privacy and security.
The euCanSHare platform is expected to impact cardiovascular research, such as for knowledge, biomarker or drug discovery. The platform will enhance the discoverability of relevant datasets for quantifying and validating new cardiovascular biomarkers (including -omics, imaging and circulating). By nature of this EU-Canada collaboration, euCanSHare also allows uniquely to investigate the impact of ethnicity, environment and genetics in the genesis, diagnosis and treatment potential of complex CVDs. The euCanSHare platform also gathers a new knowledge base for public health and policy making. For CVDs explored in euCanSHare, it is now possible to place their genesis in the context of the complex relationships of the combined effects of environment, lifestyle, genetics, and context on the health of the respective populations. Ultimately, new data-driven innovations and health policies will improve effectiveness and cost efficiency of prevention and treatment of the most prevalent CVDs, which will realise important benefits for citizens, patients, clinicians and healthcare systems.