Researchers at the University Children’s Hospital Basel (UKBB), in collaboration with the University of Basel, are developing secure methods to connect pediatric health data across institutions—strengthening the scientific foundations for more coordinated and human-centered care.
Project Overview
Researchers at the University Children’s Hospital Basel (UKBB) are exploring innovative approaches for the secure linking of clinical databases in close collaboration with the University of Basel. The sciCORE Center for Scientific Computing and Research Data at the University of Basel supports the project by providing high-performance computing infrastructure as well as expertise in the secure processing of sensitive health data.
Building on this foundation, the results of the SPHN project SwissPedHealth-PREPP are being further developed. The goal is to bring together patient data from different sources in accordance with the highest ethical and data protection standards and to generate new scientific insights from these integrated datasets. This innovative research infrastructure opens new perspectives for prevention, diagnostics, and patient care, while also laying the groundwork for future research initiatives.
Scientific and Societal Significance
Pediatric healthcare data in Switzerland is currently fragmented across hospitals and primary care providers, and essential patient information often does not move with the child as care settings change. As a result, clinicians and researchers rarely have access to a complete and continuous picture of a child’s health. The SwissPaedHealth-PREPP project, supported by Swiss Personalized Health Network, addresses this challenge by creating standards and methods that allow healthcare data from multiple institutions to be linked, analyzed, and reused in a secure and reproducible way.
This research is fundamentally important because high-quality healthcare depends on reliable, connected information. PREPP enables harmonized analysis of structured clinical data—such as diagnoses, treatments, encounters, and consent—across hospitals and primary care providers. By systematically assessing data quality, aligning structures across sites, and supporting reproducible research workflows, the project strengthens the scientific foundation needed for trustworthy clinical and population-level insights.
At the same time, PREPP directly addresses one of the most pressing challenges in modern healthcare: how to use data responsibly while protecting patient privacy. Data remain within secure environments, and no identifying information is exchanged between care providers. Instead, PREPP demonstrates that it is possible to link data from different sources using privacy-preserving identifiers that cannot be traced back to individual patients. This builds trust while enabling meaningful, cross-institutional analysis.
The ultimate beneficiaries are children and their families, who receive more coordinated, informed, and timely care. Clinicians benefit from more complete patient histories, researchers gain access to higher-quality data for robust analyses, and society benefits from more efficient healthcare systems and better use of resources. For example, access to an up-to-date, integrated vaccination history allows clinicians to make timely preventive decisions and avoid unnecessary or duplicate interventions. More broadly, linked data can improve diagnostic accuracy, support earlier detection of health risks, and inform targeted prevention strategies.
By laying the groundwork for interoperable, high-quality pediatric health data, SwissPaedHealth-PREPP creates a foundation for future innovation in clinical research, public health, and AI-supported healthcare. In doing so, it contributes to a more effective, equitable, and sustainable healthcare system—one that is better equipped to support children throughout their development.
Research Team
The core team includes:
Dr. Jorgen Bauwens
Dr. Karen Kapur
Dr. Olga Gorlanova
Prof. Dr. Julia Bielicki
Prof. Dr. Jan Bonhoeffer
Role of the Heart-Based Medicine Foundation
The Heart-Based Medicine Foundation supports this initiative both conceptually and financially, strengthening the close partnership between UKBB and the University of Basel in advancing a form of medicine that is both human-centered and technologically progressive.
Project Information
Project
SwissPaedHealth-PREPP
Scientific Lead
University Children’s Hospital Basel (UKBB)
Research Partners
University of Basel
sciCORE – Center for Scientific Computing and Research Data
Funding and Support
Heart-Based Medicine Foundation
Core Research Team
Dr. Jorgen Bauwens
Dr. Karen Kapur
Dr. Olga Gorlanova
Prof. Dr. Julia Bielicki
Prof. Dr. Jan Bonhoeffer
