In short
The goal of PHIRI (Population Health Information Research Infrastructure) is to implement a research infrastructure at the European level to study and support policy on the direct and indirect impact of COVID-19 on population health. PHIRI has a consortium of 32 beneficiaries and 9 third parties with top researchers in public health. It represents 25 Member States of the European Union and 5 associated countries.
Project description
Health is a cross-border issue, recently demonstrated by the COVID-19 public health crisis. Especially in the area of population health, we need a structured European mechanism for COVID-19 exchange to organise and share information between countries. PHIRI implements a research infrastructure to facilitate and generate the best available evidence for research on health and well-being of populations as impacted by COVID-19. PHIRI allows for better coordinated European efforts across national and European stakeholders to generate the best COVID-19 population health knowledge to underpin decision making.
PHIRI facilitates and supports open, interconnected, and data-driven research. We do this through the sharing of cross-country COVID-19 population health information and exchange of best practices related to identification of data sources, access, assessment and reuse of data on COVID-19 determinants, risk setting and outcomes following ELSI and FAIR principles. PHIRI for COVID-19 has the following objectives:
- To provide a Health Information portal for COVID-19 with FAIR catalogues on health and health care data for structured information exchange across European countries. It facilitates access to and use of COVID-19 relevant population health and care data provided by EU countries’ public health bodies represented in the PHIRI applicant consortium. It provides the services and tools necessary for researchers to link different data sources and to use Pan-European data in a GDPR compliant, federated way.
- To provide structured exchange between countries on COVID-19 best practices and expertise. PHIRI shares public health and clinical management information and methodologies identified and allows researchers to provide relevant and evidence based information ready for use in research, and decision-making processes by citizens, clinicians, public health practitioners and policy makers.
- To promote interoperability and tackle health information inequalities. PHIRI supports researchers and public health bodies to research queries related to COVID-19. It provides capacity building for management of COVID-19 relevant population health and healthcare data starting from the phase of designing data collections to analysis, reporting and preservation. Training of the health research community involves both the data producers and data users.
Consortium
Partners
- Partners: 41
- Countries: 30
Structure
Work Package (WP) | Leading Institute, Country |
WP1 Coordination and management | Sciensano, Belgium |
WP2 Communication and portal development | Sciensano, Belgium |
WP3 Outreach, engagement and sustainability | Sciensano, Belgium + Gesundheit Österreich GmbH, Austria |
WP4 Health Information portal for COVID-19 | Finnish institute for health and welfare (THL), Finland + National Public Health Institute (NIJZ), Slovenia |
WP5 Research methodologies to assess the impact of COVID-19 | Universidade de Lisboa Faculdade de Medicina (FMUL), Spain + Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII), Spain |
WP6 Research use cases measuring the impact of COVID-19 on population health | Robert Koch Institut (RKI), Germany + Institutul National de sanatate publica (INSP), Romania |
WP7 Building a federated research infrastructure for a rapid policy response | Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud (IACS), Spain + Swansea University (SU), UK |
WP8 Rapid Exchange Forum | Gesundheit Österreich GmbH, Austria |
WP9 Foresight Modelling and Scenarios | Ministry for Health — Government of Malta (MFG), Malta |
More information on the project website