Evaluation of solutions for data-driven health research networks

Description

Health data research is challenging because of the different data challenges e.g. governance, security, federation, lack of standardisation, historically poor infrastructure etc. The implementation of the secondary use of healthcare data in Scotland is fragmented, with data providers/processors using different query languages, data storage models and standards of various kinds (e.g. coding, vocabulary). To unite data from geographically decentralised databases, data federation solutions interconnect multiple databases and make data operations interoperable between data controllers/processors can improve efficiency and transparency of how data are used (through more unified processes) thus gaining more confidence from the general public.

Several initiatives/software solutions have been launched over the last decade or so to support access to healthcare data. This work will characterise the existing national and international data-driven health research networks and their software solutions from a methodological, technical and organisational perspective, to meet the needs of the Scottish Safe Haven Network. Our characterisation is based on a framework (compose with principles, architecture and model) that is inspired by the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) layer model. Existing federation solutions from proprietary and open-source platforms are reviewed and systematically assessed. The work intends to show the functionalities and responsibilities of all the participating partners. Different modes of operations (cohort discovery, distributed analysis and data extraction) are considered and discussed through the framework.

Period	5 Sept 2023
Event title	Research Software Engineering Conference 2023
Event type	Conference
Conference number	7
Location	Swansea, United KingdomShow on map