Evidenze, a company offering various services to the public sector and businesses in the healthcare and biotechnology sectors -including clinical trial management and the development of digital health solutions- has entrusted Telefónica with developing the infrastructure to build a healthcare-focused Data Space to facilitate clinical research and accelerate the development of healthcare technologies. The creation of this collaborative environment aims to drive value generation from data, facilitating its reuse in the contexts of research, advanced analysis and the development of innovative solutions.
Telefónica, through its Telefónica Tech business unit and Geprom – its engineering company specialising in industrial automation and digitalisation – is deploying the technology platform to build this Data Space, which will enable companies in the Spanish healthcare sector to share information and services without losing sovereignty and control over their data.
This Data Space enables the data from the sector’s various stakeholders to be connected without the need to physically integrate them into a single system, and ensures that access to the data takes place under predefined and verifiable conditions. Each participant (healthcare providers and public and private research centres, medical societies and patient associations, the pharmaceutical and clinical research industries, as well as providers of digital solutions and ICT services) retains control over their data, but makes it available to a shared ecosystem in a secure, anonymised manner and under shared standards to facilitate access to and the consistent reuse of that information, whilst protecting patient privacy.
The Evidenze Data Space is an environment upon which to build use cases related to biomedical research, personalised medicine, the development of health technologies, and the analysis of clinical data and services. Indeed, Evidenze has also worked with Telefónica on the development of two specific use cases, aimed at analysing the treatment and response to it in cancer patients, thereby enabling the provision of more precise and personalised care.
The first of these use cases involved the design of an AI-based predictive model capable of assessing the efficacy and safety of certain drugs in patients with untreated metastatic pancreatic cancer and anticipating the onset of potential medication-related adverse effects in the next treatment cycle. The second use case will enable researchers to determine whether the cancer treatments administered or other complex therapeutic processes achieve the expected outcomes in terms of survival and disease control, thanks to the comprehensive analysis of all data generated during the continuous monitoring of patients across different cycles of therapy.
Pedro Lisbona, director of Evidenze Data Space, states: “At Evidenze, we understand that health data achieves its maximum value when it is transformed into clinical knowledge, and that this is only possible by sharing it under a data governance model and through a secure processing environment, as required by the European EHDS regulation. Evidenze Data Space brings this model to life through a federated environment that accelerates and optimises clinical research in Europe, driving the generation of data-driven evidence and positioning Spain and Evidenze as leaders in this field. By connecting the various stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystem, it helps to advance real-world evidence and personalised medicine, whilst at all times safeguarding patient privacy and the sovereignty of each participant, and putting that knowledge to work to support better clinical decisions and improved patient care.”
Carlos Martínez, Director of AI and Data at Telefónica Tech, explains: “Data spaces represent a major opportunity to generate value across economic sectors and are key to the European Union’s strategy for applied artificial intelligence. The development of the Evidenze Data Space promotes a secure, scalable, interoperable and traceable environment so that companies in the sector can pool their data and improve the functioning of the healthcare system, whilst reinforcing our aim at Telefónica to become the best gateway for citizens, businesses and public administrations to access digital technologies.”
