What are the bottlenecks to health data sharing in Switzerland? An interview study.

Background: While health data sharing for research purposes is strongly supported in principle, it can be challenging to implement in practice. Little is known about the actual bottlenecks to health data sharing in Switzerland.

Aims Of The Study: This study aimed to assess the obstacles to Swiss health data sharing, including legal, ethical and logistical bottlenecks.

Towards a Swiss health study with human biomonitoring: Learnings from the pilot phase about participation and design.

Background: A large-scale national cohort aiming at investigating the health status and determinants in the general population is essential for high-quality public health research and regulatory decision-making. We present the protocol and first results of the pilot phase to a Swiss national cohort aiming at establishing the study procedures, evaluating feasibility, and assessing participation and willingness to participate.

Methods: The pilot phase 2020/21 included 3 components recruited via different channels: a population-based cross-sectional study targeting the adult population (20-69 years) of the Vaud and Bern cantons via personal invitation, a sub-study on selenium in a convenience sample of vegans and vegetarians via non-personal invitation in vegan/vegetarian networks, and a self-selected sample via news promotion (restricted protocol).

High participation rate among 25 721 patients with broad age range in a hospital-based research project involving whole-genome sequencing - the Lausanne Institutional Biobank.

Aims: We aimed to evaluate the interest of adult inpatients and selected outpatients in engaging in a large, real-life, hospital-based, genomic medicine research project and in receiving clinically actionable incidental findings.

Methods: Within the framework of the cross-sectional Institutional Biobank of Lausanne, Switzerland, a total of 25721 patients of the CHUV University Hospital were systematically invited to grant researchers access to their biomedical data and to donate blood for future analyses, including whole-genome sequencing. Multivariable logistic regression analysis was used to identify personal factors, including age, gender, religion, ethnicity, citizenship, education level and mode of admission, associated with willingness to participate in this genomic research project and with interest in receiving clinically actionable incidental findings.

The Lausanne Institutional Biobank: a new resource to catalyse research in personalised medicine and pharmaceutical sciences.

Breakthrough technologies which now enable the sequencing of individual genomes will irreversibly modify the way diseases are diagnosed, predicted, prevented and treated. For these technologies to reach their full potential requires, upstream, access to high-quality biomedical data and samples from large number of properly informed and consenting individuals and, downstream, the possibility to transform the emerging knowledge into a clinical utility. The Lausanne Institutional Biobank was designed as an integrated, highly versatile infrastructure to harness the power of these emerging technologies and catalyse the discovery and development of innovative therapeutics and biomarkers, and advance the field of personalised medicine.