On the 26th of May 2023, the National Cohorts Office had the privilege of hosting a seminar featuring four established guest speakers, namely, Dr Joe McNamara, Head of Cohort Strategy, Medical Research Council, UK, Professor Per Hall, Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institute, Sweden, Professor Andrew Morris, Director, Health Data Research UK and Ms Koh Mingshi, Director, Chief Health Scientist Office, Ministry of Health, Singapore.
Dr McNamara kicked start the seminar and shared from a funding agency’s perspective on how seeds sown in cohort studies in the last 3 decades started bearing fruits of labour about 10 years after, followed by an exponential trajectory of peer-reviewed publications. Professor Hall then presented on the Karolinska Biobank, a biobanking core facility with regulatory, legal, ethical, data, and laboratory support.
In the last three years, an average of 70,000 biological samples per year were withdrawal for research. Following which, Professor Morris talked about acceleration in the diversity and scale of data that would require interoperability and analytical capabilities to improve people’s health. He also introduced the Trusted Research Environments (TREs) as a platform that assembles health data and allows access to reliable data in a timely fashion.
Finally, Ms Koh presented on TRUST (Trusted Research and Real world-data Utilisation and Sharing Tech), a national health-related data exchange platform. She described the governance framework and infrastructures that are being planned in phases to support health research. The seminar concluded with a lively Question & Answer session where the speakers discussed questions including sustainability of population cohorts and assembly of data in a competent, reliable and honest manner.
The key highlights from the seminar are as follows:
- A funder’s perspective towards longitudinal studies
- Biobanking – The Karolinska Institute Experience
- Transforming Population Health: Realising the potential of population cohorts
- TRUST framework and governance
Catch the session here via Youtube!