Data Access & Analysis
Research Project (Pilot): Public-Private Partnership
A new collaboration framework allows private partners to transform Swiss health data into actionable insights while preserving patients’ privacy.
A new collaboration framework allows private partners to transform Swiss health data into actionable insights while preserving patients’ privacy.
Hospitals in the Swiss Personalized Health Network (SPHN) host a wealth of real-world data from over 700’000 patients who have given their general consent. With the new framework for public-private collaborations, pharmaceutical companies can answer simple research questions without accessing personal health data. These results can be translated into solutions for patients and, as such, further improve healthcare.
SPHN analyzes the data on behalf of the partner
The process for such collaborations is as simple as it is privacy-preserving: Industry partners submit a research question. The hospitals transfer the necessary data in anonymized form to the Trusted Research Environment BioMedIT, where SPHN’s Coordination Center conducts the analysis and deliveres aggregated results back to the industry partner. No data is shared with the industry partner.
As only summarized results are shared with the company, the project complies with the high ethical standards of SPHN for responsible data sharing and public-private partnerships.
What is the benefit of Public-Private Collaborations?
With this new setup for collaboration with private partners, SPHN meets a need of both industry and hospitals, and caters to the strong wish of patients to enable research adhering to high ethical and data protection standards. Research with health data will benefit patients and society.
Past Pilot Projects
As the first project of this kind, SPHN has in 2024 partnered with Novartis along with the Cantonal Hospital Aarau and the University Hospital Basel. Results were delivered to Novartis in October 2025.