icometrix selected as new partner in EHDEN project

Leuven, Belgium | Boston, US - January 21, 2021 - On December 16th, 2021 icometrix was selected as a new data partner in the European Health Data and Evidence Network project (EHDEN), a public-private partnership set up under the framework of the IMI2 program. This was launched to address the current challenges in generating insights and evidence from real-world clinical data at scale, to support patients, clinicians, payers, regulators, governments, and the industry in understanding wellbeing, disease, treatments, outcomes, and new therapeutics and devices.

The EHDEN project aimed to standardize more than 100 million patient records across Europe from different geographic areas and different data sources. To date, the project is collaborating with 143 data partners, totaling approximately 450 million patient records, making it a huge success. Mapping of patient data to the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP) Common Data Model (CDM), which is driven by the vibrant OHDSI community, will facilitate their use for a variety of purposes, enhancing and accelerating research and healthcare decision-making for global benefit.

Through EHDEN, icometrix will increase the interoperability of its digital tools with other healthcare tools by standardizing its longitudinal observational health data. This will be achieved by mapping the data to the OMOP CDM. After completion of this mapping in the second half of 2022, icometrix becomes a member of the EHDEN community and can participate in research studies following their own governance rules through the EHDEN federated network.

By becoming an EHDEN data partner, icometrix will boost the value and potential impact of the analyses it performs for it’s clients and partners. Being able to provide the results in an OMOP compatible format will boost the reproducibility and transparency of any further analyses, and together with the improved data interoperability adds tremendous value to the data at hand. The latter will for example boost opportunities to participate in international studies as more and more institutions adopt OMOP. Noteworthy, all of this happens while data partners themselves retain full control of their data since research studies are run through a federated network. 

“Especially since the pandemic, digital health technologies are ubiquitous in healthcare. However, the presence of different formats for data handling limits the full potential of those technologies. By standardizing our datasets to the OMOP Common Data Model, which is rapidly becoming the de facto standard, icometrix wants to be a frontrunner in the creation of a seamlessly collaborative healthcare environment that enables cutting-edge research and improves patient care.” says Dirk Smeets, CTO at icometrix. 

About EHDEN

The European Health Data & Evidence Network (EHDEN) mission is to reduce the time to provide an answer in real-world, health research. It will achieve this by developing the required infrastructure in a federated network at scale across Europe, collaboration on research methodologies, and education in an open science collaboration. EHDEN has received funding from the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement No 806968. The JU receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program and EFPIA.