I’m leading from the FPI side, or private side, Work Package 2 which is on dealing with the pilot, the first datasets we’re bringing in to the HARMONY project, and to define outcomes measures which are applicable for all haematological malignancies included in the HARMONY project but also specific outcomes sets specific for each disease entity.

When will you be able to start interrogating this data?

Yes, we already started with the pilot project, this is an AML dataset including about 1,500 patients. But there are many prerequisites to fulfil to look at, to check the informed consent, to look at data privacy. Although this is still one task on which we are still working on, another task is to look at the data themselves – what the data looks like, are they complete, are there many missing data, are they very complicated etc.? This we are working on now in close collaboration with other Work Packages. There are people who only deal with the datasets themselves so this is still going on. Now we have to focus on the other task which is to define outcomes.

How are you going to use the data?

We have to harmonise the datasets, the different datasets, at some point so that one organisation or institution can raise a research question and then they can be sure that this research question could be answered by the data platform and that the data which are provided by this data platform are valid and are really of good quality. So then you have to have harmonised the outcomes measures to deal with the research question.

So it’s very exciting for Bayer to be involved in this project?

Clearly, exactly. It is really very exciting, it is also very exciting to collaborate with other companies, other academic institutions or patient networks. So it is really very exciting to have all the different stakeholders with their different view on outcomes. For instance, a doctor physician will focus on other outcomes than a statistician or a health economist. To bring all the different views together, this is really very exciting.

What else is gained from Bayer’s perspective?

It is really very useful for our company. It is always useful to network at some point but also if you have rare diseases, for instance cancer, most of the cancer entities are rare diseases, then you have to have more data and more patients to work on research questions.