HeSANDA

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SHP and the NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre (CTC) at the University of Sydney lead the Sydney Node Project of the Health Studies Australian National Data Asset (HeSANDA) program.

What is HeSANDA?

HeSANDA is a program of the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) that aims to build the national infrastructure required to support the sharing and reuse of health research data in a way that would bring value to the research community, increase the efficiency of research, and provide benefits for the health of Australia’s population.

The program is starting with a focus on sharing and re-using data that has been collected through investigator-initiated clinical trials, but hopes to expand to include other types of research data in the future.

To date, nine nodes (clusters or research organisations) have been approved to be involved in the development of the HeSANDA initiative by ARDC, including SHP-CTC/Sydney Node. Other key stakeholders from ANZCTR, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, and the Australian Data Archive are also contributing to this initiative.

Focus of the Sydney Node

Current work is focusing on the systems and processes that will enable findability and accessibility of clinical trial study data. The Sydney Node is developing:

  • Data repository (hosted by the University of Sydney) to securely store high-level descriptive clinical trials information (i.e. study protocol, data dictionary, publications) for trials that may be available for data sharing.
  • Data request system to review data access requests and allow data sharing. The image below shows the data infrastructure components that the Federation Service, Nodes and ANZCTR will provide as part of the HeSANDA system. 
*Federation Services: Central services to provide an aggregated data catalogue and common data request capability at the national level.

How Can You Contribute?

If you are a Principal Investigator who is interested in learning more about sharing your clinical trial data, please contact the Sydney Node Project Manager, Talia Palacios: talia.palacios@sydney.edu.au

Funding

The Sydney node of the HeSANDA project received investment (doi.org/10.47486/HS002) from the Australian Research Data Commons. The ARDC is funded by the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy.