HealthyCloud – Defining the Strategic Agenda for the European Health Research and Innovation Cloud

HealthyCloud – Defining the Strategic Agenda for the European Health Research and Innovation Cloud

Just launched HealthyCloud project, funded by the European Commission, will deliver a Strategic Agenda for the implementation of the European Health Research and Innovation Cloud (HRIC). This project will work in collaboration with a broad range of stakeholders to ensure that all voices are included and that the results are technically and ethically sound.

Advances in health and biomedical sciences require that health research is performed timely, efficiently and oriented to high-quality results. To meet this need and to maximize the impact of health research, adopting best practices in health data management is essential. 

European Health Research and Innovation Cloud (HRIC) will be one of the cornerstones of the European Health Data Space (EHDS) the creation of which is one of the European Commission priorities in the years 2019-2025. The EHDS will be a means to improve health research and its translation to healthcare at all levels: from public health to personalized medicine, through secondary use of health data.

– HealthyCloud will pave the way for an effective health-related data sharing across Europe, contributing to the realization of the European Health Data Space. It is important to understand existing barriers that limit the effective exchange of health-related data. This effort will allow us to propose ethically sound, legally compliant and technically feasible open standards and protocols to overcome them, says Salvador Capella, Spanish National Bioinformatics Institute (INB) Coordination Node Leader at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) and HealthyCloud Co-coordinator.

The ultimate goal of the project is to propose the blueprint to create an ecosystem that builds and reinforces the trust of patients and citizens in the use of their health data for research actionable through a portal that serves as an interface to interact with the cloud services.

CSC – IT Center for Science is a partner in this project focusing on considerations on-site health data security policies and breach response protocols. The security aspects also relate to the management of users regarding who has access to the sensitive data undertaking the analysis on the computational resources.

– The HealthyCloud project promotes the safe use of health data by facilitating good practice and building trust among patients and citizens, says Development Manager Ilkka Lappalainen from CSC.

Helena Lodenius, Senior project coordinator from CSC emphasizes:

–The establishment of a transnational HRIC will enable data sharing and analysis for health research across the EU, which in turn will support the development of innovative medicines and diagnostics.

Press release:
The HealthyCloud project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the grant agreement Nº 96534