DIGItal Infrastructure for ONcology in Europe: DigiONE I3

Programme(s): Interregional Innovation Investments Instrument (I3)

Topic(s): I3-2021-INV1-DIGIT

Type of action: I3 Project Grants

Project ID: 101115081

Objective: The Digital Institute for Cancer Outcome research (DIGICORE) is a Belgium-based European Economic Interest Grouping with 38 cancer center members in 14 countries, and IQVIA. It was set up in 2020 for the sole purpose of preparing European cancer centers for the digital research revolution. It is majority controlled by cancer centers. The DigiONE I3 proposal creates a federated, privacy appropriate, high quality, digital research network that links routine clinical data with routine molecular data information from 15 large cancer centres in 9 countries, with 10 private partners in 18 S3 regions. The underlying digital infrastructure provides a minimal description of every patient’s cancer diagnosis, biomarkers, treatment and outcomes in near real time & internationally standardised. It is built on open standards and through open innovation with multiple private sector vendors. Precision oncology researchers worldwide (academic and commercial) access federated, privacy-managed fee-for-service, reliable protocolised insights with which to study modern cancer treatments and diagnostics in real world data, or for health systems analysis to improve cancer care. The economic model will reflect differences in ability to pay and IP requirements: at-cost, opensource access for academics with peer-reviewed non-commercial funding, and fair-market-value pricing for larger companies developing patented commercial products. DigiONE I3 will serve to develop two new value chains that promote economic growth and increase jobs: (1) in providing digital research services to the global pharma/life science industry including trials and care quality analytics, and (2) by catalysing a vibrant and competitive European market in digital services to hospitals that supports Europe’s digital modernisation agenda. I3 income will bridge the gap from technology proof of concept to a commercially relevant network with the scale to recruit to rare subgroups in precision oncology research.