Platform Projects
In our hospitals, enormous amounts of data are generated every day: blood values, tissue sample results, ultrasound or X-ray images – to name just a few examples. However, accessing this clinical data and using it for research purposes is not straightforward. For this reason, the six medically oriented research institutions of The LOOP Zurich have agreed to establish a shared, central biomedical informatics platform – The LOOP Biomedical Informatics Platform (The LOOP BMIP). The goal is to create a compatible data processing structure that enables Zurich’s research community to access structured patient data. In addition, the findings and results obtained can be fed back to the hospitals — for patient care or for more efficient operations.
To support the development of The LOOP BMIP, The LOOP Zurich launched a new project type in 2023: The LOOP Zurich Platform Projects. Similar to the Translational Projects, at least two institutions must be involved in each Platform Project. Moreover, complementary skills, expertise, and resources are to be brought together to further advance The LOOP BMIP.
The total funding for a Platform Project amounts to a maximum of CHF 1 million, granted over a period of three years.
In the first call for proposals, researchers were invited to submit Platform Projects that aim to:
- Integrate novel and complementary types of health-related data – such as omics data, imaging data, and/or quasi-real-time data (high-frequency recordings) into The LOOP BMIP.
- Develop new analytical techniques capable of processing large amounts of relevant medical data of various types. These techniques should lead to new insights into a medical problem and/or predict possible outcomes and/or treatment responses, with the potential to guide and improve clinical decision-making.
An expert panel recommended two Platform Projects for funding, both of which launched in early 2024.