Global Open Health Data Cooperatives Cloud in an Era of COVID-19 and Planetary Health.

Abstract

Big data in both the public domain and the health care industry are growing rapidly, for example, with broad availability of next-generation sequencing and large-scale phenomics datasets on patient-reported outcomes. In parallel, we are witnessing new research approaches that demand sharing of data for the benefit of planetary society. Health data cooperatives (HDCs) is one such approach, where health data are owned and governed collectively by citizens who take part in the HDCs. Data stored in HDCs should remain readily available for translation to public health practice but at the same time, governed in a critically informed manner to ensure data integrity, veracity, and privacy, to name a few pressing concerns. As a solution, we suggest that data generated from high-throughput omics research and phenomics can be stored in an open cloud platform so that researchers around the globe can share health data and work collaboratively. We describe here the Global Open Health Data Cooperatives Cloud (GOHDCC) as a proposed cloud platform-based model for the sharing of health data between different HDCCs around the globe. GOHDCC's main objective is to share health data on a global scale for robust and responsible global science, research, and development. GOHDCC is a citizen-oriented model cooperatively governed by citizens. The model essentially represents a global sharing platform that could benefit all stakeholders along the health care value chain.