International Clinical Research Data Ecosystem: From Data Standardization to Federated Analysis

Abstract

Within the HORIZON 2020 project ORCHESTRA, patient data from numerous clinical studies in Europe related to COVID-19 were harmonized to create new knowledge on the disease. In this article, we describe the ecosystem that was established for the management of data collected and contributed by project partners. Study protocols elements were mapped to interoperability standards to establish a common terminology. That served as the basis of identifying common concepts used across several studies. Harmonized data were used to perform analysis directly on a central database and also through federated analysis when data was not permitted to leave the local server(s). This ecosystem facilitates the answering of research questions and generation of new knowledge available for the scientific community.

Keywords: Clinical research; Data management; Data transformation; FAIR data; Federated data analysis; Interoperability.