By selecting the 16 winners of its call for projects, France 2030 is highlighting the importance of health data warehouses (HDWs) for research and medical innovation. Here we take a closer look at the issues and challenges they face.
What is a health data warehouse?
The health data warehouse is an essential tool in the medical field, designed to facilitate access to centralised data and guarantee respect for patient privacy.
Each healthcare professional uses dedicated business software that partially isolates data, ensuring that only information relevant to their practice is accessible. The EDS makes it possible to centralise data from these various business applications within a single database. Its primary objective is to provide fast, efficient access to the information that is crucial to healthcare professionals, offering a complete, integrated view of the data for an individual or group of individuals.
EDS also ensures the confidentiality and security of data in accordance with current standards and regulations, such as the European RGPD and health information security standards. As part of its dedicated call for projects, France 2030 required the use of qualified cloud hosting. approach.
There are three key stages in creating an EDS:
- Collecting heterogeneous data from different information systems, with interoperability constraints,
- Standardisation and pseudonymisation of data to make it usable,
- The choice of data storage model to facilitate use and guarantee confidentiality.
The challenges of EDS
Above all, DHSs help to improve care pathways and hospital management. By centralising information, healthcare professionals can more easily monitor and analyse the prevalence of disease. This makes it possible to anticipate and optimise the use of resources, and ultimately to achieve better results for patients. These human challenges are linked to economic ones. A better cared-for patient is one who is discharged more quickly and for longer. The cost of material resources is also reduced when they are optimised.
DHSs also allow secondary use of health data for clinical research. Data from French patients is particularly valuable and qualitative in this context, as the French healthcare system is highly centralised. Used outside their care pathways, patient data feeds into studies and algorithms to develop new treatments or protocols.
The potential gains from the proper use of health data are therefore high, and the economic stakes are high, since by 2022 the consumption of healthcare and medical goods in France had risen to 235.8 billion euros*.
The challenges of DHS
While the issues surrounding DHS are numerous, the challenges are colossal. First and foremost, funding is a critical issue. A health data warehouse is a long-term project. Between data collection, standardisation, storage and operational maintenance, costs can quickly become high and increase as the project progresses. The dedicated call for projects as part of France 2030 has enabled the winning programmes to obtain funding of up to €75 million, which is needed to cover these costs and create a high-quality database.
To guarantee their effectiveness in terms of security and accessibility, EDSs need to be modernised in order to remain operational. To achieve this, organisations can migrate their EDS to the cloud. As well as reducing costs, the scalability and availability of the cloud are assets that help to keep the platform running smoothly. Collaboration and integration with other services and applications are also facilitated by the cloud.
Finally, such a sensitive database requires extra attention in terms of security. Protecting health data deserves the highest security standards on the market. Hosting data in the cloud HDS certified and qualified SecNumCloud is the solution put forward by France 2030 and the one preferred by industry professionals.
As part of the France 2030 national investment plan, a call for projects was launched for the creation and consolidation of health data warehouses. A total of 16 winning projects were selected, involving 54 partners in the consortia that will build the regional network of 62 EDSs.
- The AP-HP ACCES project
- The eDOL project at Montpellier University Hospital
- The EDEN4HEALTH project led by the GCS Grand Est
- The ODH Project 2.0 supported by the GCS HUGO and the ODH
- The EDS NOVA project supported by the GCS NOVA
- UNICANCER's ONCODS project
- The AnDH (Antilles Data Hub) project led by the Martinique CHR/U in partnership with the Guadeloupe CHR/U
- The D2H - DATAHUBHOURAA2 project led by the Groupement de Coopération Sanitaire des CHU de Clermont-Ferrand, Grenoble, Lyon et Saint-Etienne (Clermont-Ferrand, Grenoble, Lyon and Saint-Etienne university hospitals)
- The DATA4HEALTH2 project led by GCS G4 - Groupement de Coopération Sanitaire des CHR/U d'Amiens, Caen, Lille and Rouen
- The E-CONFLUENCE project of the Centres Hospitaliers Intercommunaux de Créteil et de Villeneuve Saint Georges
- The EDGAR 2030 project led by Hôpital Foch in partnership with the Saint-Joseph Marseille private non-profit-making establishments, Hôpital Européen de Marseille, Institut Montsouris and Institut Catholique de Lille.
- The EDS ELSAN project led by the Groupement de Coopération Sanitaire ELSAN for research, teaching and innovation
- The EDS GHU PARIS project of the Groupe Hospitalier Universitaire Paris - Psychiatry and neuroscience
- The EDS MEDITERRANEE project for Research and Excellence in Health, led by the Nice CHR/U in partnership with the Marseille APHM, the CLCC Institut Paoli Calmettes and Lacassagne and the Nice CHU-Lenval paediatric hospitals.
- HD4C project led by the CHU de Reims with its partners the CHU/R Maison Blanche, the Épernay, Chalons en Champagne and Saint-Léon en côte basque hospitals, the Centre Hospitalier Intercommunal Nord-Ardennes and the Établissement public de santé mentale de la Marne.
- The Health Data 3OI project - Health data in Occitanie Ouest and the Indian Ocean, led by Toulouse University Hospital in partnership with the CHR/U de la Réunion.
*Source: Drees