European Commission & CIHRNew Consortium ReCoDID Launched to Facilitate Data and Sample Sharing for Infectious Diseases
Reconciliation of Cohort data in Infectious Diseases (ReCoDID), a Horizon 2020 project funded by the European Commission (EC) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), had its inaugural kick-off meeting May 6-7 in Heidelberg, Germany.
The consortium brings together a multidisciplinary team from four continents to fast track the research response to viruses and other pathogens by facilitating data and sample sharing between infectious disease cohort studies and building linkages between data generators and the Open Science community. ReCoDID is coordinated by Dr. Thomas Jaenisch at Heidelberg University Hospital and the Heidelberg Institute of Global Health (HIGH).
The project builds on existing partnerships between stakeholders in Europe, North- and Latin-America and Africa to address political, ethical, administrative, regulatory and legal (PEARL) barriers to sharing both biological sample and clinical data from infectious disease cohorts. Team members will develop new statistical tools to address complex measurement, harmonization, and causal inference issues that arise in prospective- and retrospective cross-cohort harmonization efforts.
ReCoDID will combine innovations in data sharing and statistical methods with long-term investments in cloud-computing and data curation to create an integrated, sustainable platform for collaborative research. The new model will facilitate cohorts’ use of their own epidemiological and high-dimensional -omics data and connect knowledge generators with the Open Science community to accelerate the development of personalized medicine approaches to the identification, prevention, and treatment of (emerging) infectious diseases. ReCoDID is organized into 7 work packages comprised of acknowledged specialists in their respective fields. During the kick-off meeting in Heidelberg, partners engaged in both plenary and work-package specific sessions, setting the stage for the next years.
ReCoDID is a 4-year (2019-2022), € 6 million, 800K CAD Research and Innovation Action funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Programme (grant agreement No 825746) under the call SC1-BHC-0520 (“International flagship collaboration with Canada for human data storage, integration and sharing to enable personalized medicine approaches”) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute of Genetics (CIHR-IG) under grant agreement No 01886-000.