[Research Data Center on Health - Vision for Further Development from the Research Perspective]. / Forschungsdatenzentrum Gesundheit ­ Vision für eine Weiterentwicklung aus Sicht der Forschung.

The German research data center for health will provide claims data of statutory health insurances. The data center was set up at the medical regulatory body BfArM pursuant to the German data transparency regulation (DaTraV). The data provided by the center will cover about 90% of the German population, supporting research on healthcare issues, including questions of care supply, demand and the (mis-)match of both. These data support the development of recommendations for evidence-based healthcare. The legal framework for the center (including §§ 303a-f of Book V of the Social Security Code and two subsequent ordinances) leaves a considerable degree of freedom when it comes to organisational and procedural aspects of the center's operation. The present paper addresses these degrees of freedom. From the point of view of researchers, ten statements show the potential of the data center and provide ideas for its further and sustainable development.

[Now is the Time to Establish an Efficient Health Research Data Centre]. / Jetzt die Weichen stellen für ein leistungsfähiges Forschungsdatenzentrum Gesundheit.

Based on sections 303a to 303f social code book V, the course is currently being set for an innovative and high-performance national information and data platform. This requires short-term provision of current and relevant data on the health care system, especially process data on statutory health insurance and other social insurance carriers, using established methodological standards as well as taking into account data protection regulations. From the point of view of future users, expectations regarding an "ideal" research health data centre are formulated in ten recommendations. The present article is an offer from health services researchers intended to support decision-makers in the field of politics and self-administration in the German health system in their task of establishing and further development of a research health data centre.

IT Infrastructure for Registries in Health Services Research: A Market Study in Germany.

Registries are increasingly implemented to record the practice of health care. Within a national funding scheme for registries, an accompanying project was launched to support the design of the registries' IT infrastructure amongst other tasks for 16 projects. A challenge of data management systems was organized by the accompanying project in order to enable the projects to define realistic expectations towards IT support in their research protocols. Twelve vendors participated in the challenge. They presented their solutions for selected use cases. In advance, the projects considered a sufficient authorization concept and the possibility to export data to be of highest importance. However, the systems covered mainly core processes of electronic data capture. The accompanying project will continue its support for the next stage of the funding scheme, which will be the implementation of the registries that win a competitive review of their research protocols prepared in the concept development stage.

[Current modalities and concepts on access and use of biospecimen samples and associated data for research from human biobanks]. / Nutzungskonzepte für Proben und Daten aus humanen Biobanken für die Forschung.

It is accepted worldwide that biospecimen and data sharing (BDS) play an essential role for the future of medical research to improve diagnostics and prognostics, e.g. by validated biomarkers. BDS is also pivotal to the development of new therapeutic treatments and for the improvement of population health. Human biobanks can generate an added value to this need by providing biospecimens and/or associated data to researchers. An inspection of several examples of epidemiological as well as clinical/disease-oriented biobanks in Germany shows that best practice procedures (BPP) that are internationally agreed on are being installed for biospecimen and/or data access. In general, fair access is aimed at requiring a written application by the requesting scientist, which is then peer-reviewed for scientific and ethical validity by the Biobank. Applied BPP take into account (i) patient education/agreement according to the informed consent model, (ii) privacy protection, (iii) intellectual property rights, the (iv) notification obligation of health-related findings (including incidental findings), the (v) use of material (MTA) and data transfer agreements (DTA) for mutual legal security, the avoidance of conflicts of interests, as well as for cost recovery/fee for service as a basis for sustainability of the biobank. BPP are rooted in the self-regulation efforts of life sciences and are supported by parent ethics committees in Germany. Central biobank registries displaying aggregated information on biospecimens stored and the research foci constitute an important tool to make biobanks that are scattered across the country visible to each other, and, can thus promote access to hitherto unknown biospecimen and data resources.