A growing consortium of university medical centers, research organisations and private partners is developing a public private partnership with the aim to develop and run the so-called ‘Personal Health Train (PHT)’. The PHT aims for increased utilisation of existing biomedical data for research into personalized health, preventive and tailored medicine and value-based health care. This movie is a short introduction to the project.
The PHT initiative is coordinated by Andre Dekker (Maastricht UMC+ and MAASTRO Clinic) and Peter-Bram ‘t Hoen (LUMC) in the context of the DTL partnership.
The key concept behind the PHT is to bring research to the data rather than the classical solution of bringing data to the research. As a prerequisite, health data is made FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable). Keeping the data where they are (and ‘belong’) is a trend that is seen everywhere and inspired by two major forces: first, personal and privacy sensitive data can not be easily ’sent elsewhere’ without major legal, social and ethical concerns, but in addition, datasets are increasingly too large to be effectively downloaded form their original location. The PHT is designed to give controlled access to heterogeneous data sources while ensuring maximum privacy protection and maximum engagement of individual patients or citizens.
The PHT initiative invites partners to jump on the train and make the PHT a reality through collaboration and by jointly acquiring funding. More information.