A structured European mechanism for COVID-19 exchange to organize and share information between countries is urgently needed, especially in the area of population health. Information on the broader impacts of COVID-19 on the health of populations is needed to facilitate multidisciplinary European research and underpin decision making. PHIRI aims to facilitate and support open, interconnected, and data-driven research through the sharing of cross-country COVID-19 population health information and exchange of best practices related to data collection, curation, processing, use and reuse following ELSI and FAIR principles. It has the objective: to provide a Health Information portal for COVID-19 with FAIR catalogues on health and health care data, to provide structured exchange between countries on COVID-19 best practices and expertise, and to promote interoperability and tackle health information inequalities. To this end, it builds with national nodes a Health Information portal (WP4) on data sources, population health studies, training material and courses, considering ethical and legal aspects. The portal is supported by WP7 that provides the technological substrate for the development of a federated research infrastructure. WP5 develops a consolidated framework to assess the direct and indirect impacts of COVID-19 on population wellbeing, morbidity and mortality. WP6 will look at COVID-19 impacts in specific subgroups by conducting research through use cases of immediate relevance and facilitates research by making scalable, reproducible methods available within PHIRI. WP8, the Rapid Exchange Forum, provides swift responses to research and policy questions that are raised in countries to handle the COVID-19 pandemic. WP9 gains insights in possible future health impacts of the coronavirus outbreak by modelling scenarios for national situations. This will be carried out in close collaboration with different types of actors and initiatives across Europe (WP3).

BACKGROUND: There is an urgent need to improve health and care systems in a way that health inequalities are reduced, health professionals are better protected, and financial & environmental waste are minimised. To do so, actionable health performance intelligence has to be available to and used by all relevant decision-makers in the system. CONSORTIUM: In this Industrial Doctorate, health and care system decision-makers (policymakers, purchasers, managers, health professionals, patients and citizens) join forces with scientific experts from a wide array of disciplines (e.g. data science, clinical science, systems science, planetary health, health economics, citizen science). AIM: By training a next generation of professionals that leverage existing data across society to co-create actionable performance intelligence with users, HealthIntelAct aims to empower decision-makers to strengthen health and care systems’ positive impact on people, planet, and prosperity. WORKPLAN: Via training-through-research and co-creation with different sectors, 15 PhD fellows will develop new methods to measure health and care systems’ people-centredness, environmental sustainability, and impact on prosperity. They will develop tools to improve the interpretation of health data and embedding of intelligence in governance, and develop strategies to apply intelligence in decision-making processes. Finally, they will develop instruments to evaluate the use of healthcare performance intelligence in practice. IMPACT: The actionable performance intelligence developed during the project has large potential to lead to improved health equity and access to care, improved worker satisfaction, and reduced financial and environmental waste in health and care systems. After HealthIntelAct, our fellows will be well positioned to pursue careers in academia (health services research, data science), government (health policy), healthcare (quality assurance), and commercial business (IT, data analysis).