Harmonisation Fund

In EHDEN we have a fund of 15 million Euro to support our data standardisation efforts across Europe. To ensure a fair, transparent and efficient use of these funds, open calls to award financial grants are communicated through the EHDEN website. We expect to follow a scheme of continuously open calls for activities that qualify for financial support, with periodic cut-off dates for evaluation. To ensure diversity and representativeness of data in the network, an open call may include specific priorities, focused on for example certain data source types, geographic locations or disease areas. If applicable, such priorities will be transparently and publicly disclosed as part of the call information published on the EHDEN website.

The Harmonisation Grant can only be used to cover the cost of mapping source data to the OMOP common data model, using an EHDEN-certified SME.

EHDEN foresees three different type of grants, depending on the current situation of the data partner:

• Create new Data Transformation and Analytical Infrastructure

This activity is intended for Data Partners that have not yet mapped their data to the OMOP-CDM. It includes the data source profiling, development and implementation of the ETL process and quality control assessments. Additionally, the analytical tools will be deployed at the local site and the data custodian will receive training. After passing inspection for both the data transformation and analytical infrastructure by a certified SME, the data source meta data in the Database Catalogue will be modified to reflect this.  The Data Partner can then fully participate in the community and data network.

• Revise Existing Data Transformation and Analytical Infrastructure

This activity is intended for data sources that are already partially mapped to the CDM, to add additional domains (e.g. measurements, procedures) or add new source vocabulary mappings. The financial support will also be used for quality assessment of the ETL, tool deployment, training and the inclusion in the Database Catalogue after passing inspection for both the data transformation and analytical infrastructure by a certified SME. This activity enables these Data Partners to utilise the expertise in EHDEN to further improve and extend their CDM mapping.

• Inspect Completed Data Transformation and Analytical Infrastructure

This activity consists of a standardised procedure developed in EHDEN which needs to be applied by a certified SME to ascertain the quality of the ETL and status of the analytical infrastructure. If the quality of the ETL, including its documentation, is at the level required by EHDEN and the deployed tools are successfully tested at the local site, the data source will be added in the Database Catalogue with the information that this validation has been performed. If the quality of the mapping is below the standard the Data Partner could fix this and a second inspection will take place. If substantial changes are needed the Data Partner could apply for additional funding to remedy this.

The Data Partner can only apply for one activity per call round but could apply for funding for multiple activities during the EHDEN project. However, the total amount of funding for all activities cannot exceed 100.000 euro per Data Partner.

Overall, a maximum of 100.000 Euro per Data Partner can be made available for financial support. EHDEN has the public responsibility to make sure it utilises the fund optimally for the inclusion of as many high-quality data sources as possible without sacrificing equal opportunity and fairness in the process. Therefore, a maximum amount of financial support is set per activity as shown in the table below, and the three levels of complexity (Low, Medium, High). The funding bands are based on prior experience in mapping diverse data sources within the other projects, including OHDSI global collaboration. The main cost component is the person hours spent on the standardisation process by a SME or similar.