SYNCHROS?  The project in a Nutshell:

  • A three-years European project funded under the Research Programme Horizon 2020. Project start: Jan. 1st, 2019
  • Goal: Coordination and support for synchronising cohorts and population surveys in Europe and worldwide
  • Focus on practical, methodological, ethical and legal challenges to facilitate research towards the development of stratified and personalised medicine as well as better health policies
  • Initiated by institutions and experts representing epidemiological and clinical research, patients, legal/ethical competencies and European infrastructures
  • How it helps researchers and PIs?  See our INFOPOSTER – download

The Challenge

The development of stratified and personalised medicine requires a broad basis of data representative for groups of patients or a population. Research limited to one cohort is limited in terms of its statistical relevance and transferability of outcomes because of lower numbers of individuals covered by one cohort. Medical research combining data from different cohorts is challenged by the different national, organisational or legal systems governing those cohorts. Often, variables and data are available in one cohort, but missing in another or defined differently.

Our Approach

• Map the cohort study landscape
• Collect information on legal and organisational standards
• Compile information on variables
• Propose algorithms for the detection of systematic errors and approximation of missing values
• Recommendations for standardisation
• Implementation by stakeholder dialogue and consensus building

Our Stakeholders

• Cohort leaders
• International Research Organizations
• Alliances for standardisation
• Patient organisations
• Funding bodies
• Health administrations
• WHO
• Editors of peer-reviewed journals
11
Partners
6
Countries
40
Initiatives
1001
Cohort Studies Covered

What Our Stakeholders Have to Say

Prof. Steinar Krokstad, PhD, MD
Leader HUNT Study, HUNT Research Centre, Levanger, Norway
For The HUNT Study NTNU (https://www.ntnu.edu/hunt), participation in SYNCHROS is highly interesting with regard to increase the collaboration with other health surveys internationally.
Prof. Dr. Jose L. Ayuso-Mateos
Leader Cohort Landscape Mapping (SYNCHROS WP1), UAM, Madrid, Spain
The SYNCHROS-project offers expertise and resources to bring together different initiatives that work towards the harmonisation of data across different cohorts. An information platform is being built. It supports PIs of cohorts in their efforts to liaise with other cohorts and to foster research that spans different data collections from different institutions and countries. This is excellent and much needed, as we can clearly see in the current Covid-19 pandemia. I am proud to be a part of the Synchros initiative!
Dr. Josep Maria Haro
Coordinator SYNCHROS; PSSJD, Barcelona, Spain
Collecting large amounts of cohort data is not easy and thus, we should benefit optimally from existing datasets. One way to achieve that is by harmonising different datasets. Nowadays, there are many experts in data harmonisation and SYNCHROS aims to streamline their knowledge into a proposal that would facilitate future harmonisation of cohort studies, taking into account the methodological as well as ethical and legal issues.

Latest news for you

Read Our Blog and Comment

See all our Blogs

Back To Top