Grant: Team Grant: Canada-EU Data flagship collaboration

Personalised medicine approaches are highly needed in the domain of cardiology, as cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the major contributors to mortality and morbidity worldwide. To date, cardiovascular research has been conducted by interrogating biomedical data in single cohorts, but these are often limited to specific populations, geographical areas, or data type. These challenges call for integrated multi-cohort approaches to allow researchers to investigate established and emerging markers within and across heterogeneous populations. In Canada, CVD research has been at the forefront of multi-cohort approaches through the Canadian Alliance for Healthy Hearts and Minds (CAHHM) (MUHC, McGill, McMaster, ICES). The CAHHM exploited Canadian know-how in legal data (McGill) and in harmonisation and integration (MUHC) to create a centralised longitudinal super-cohort from 8 Canadian cohorts for enhanced data sharing in cardiovascular research. However, infrastructures and models to facilitate integrated sharing of information and data between Canadian and European cohorts are missing. The euCanSHare project proposes to leverage, extend and integrate two complimentary initiatives in Canada (CAHHM) and Europe (BiomarCaRE) to develop a robust ecosystem for enhanced data sharing, integration and exploitation in CVD research. In this way, existing Canadian and European tools will be put on a Common IT platform developed within euCanSHare, and will offer extensive services and functionalities. Comparative analysis of legal frameworks in Canada and Europe will be led by experts from Canada (McGill) to inform the shared automation of such services. The integrated cloud-based collection of technologies, policies and standardised procedures will reduce the cost of research, allowing efficient data management at scale across international projects.