Building the national infrastructure for health research data sharing and collaboration.
HeSANDA Infrastructure Development is one of three major work streams in the Health Studies Australian National Data Asset (HeSANDA) program and will deliver the infrastructure to enable the creation of a national health data asset. HeSANDA Infrastructure Development will adopt a co-creation approach. ARDC will facilitate collaborative partnerships between research institutions, organisations, and other relevant stakeholders involved in clinical trials research. Full details can be found in the HeSANDA Infrastructure Development background document and you can watch a recording of the information session.
Approach
The HeSANDA Infrastructure Development work stream is a collaborative process. Participants are not competing on distinctive ideas, but rather collaborating together to build a set of compatible nodes within a federated national initiative. The open call for Infrastructure Development will take a three stage approach:
- Registration of interest
- Node facilitation
- Proposal submission
Registration of interest phase
Organisations can register their interest and nominate any partner organisations they will work with to establish a potential HeSANDA node.
Node facilitation phase
ARDC will arrange facilitation meetings with organisations who have registered their interest to investigate potential node configurations and optimisation.
Proposal submission
Participants in the facilitation phase will be invited to submit a proposal. The proposal submission will be a lightweight process to document the scope and coverage of the proposed node. Download the full RFP documentation.
Timeline
The table below provides an indicative time frame for these activities. Please note the ongoing impact of COVID-19 may result in significant changes over time.
| Activity | Date |
|---|---|
| Information session | 17 February 2021 |
| Registrations of interest | March 2021 |
| Facilitation of nodes | April 2021 |
| Submission of proposals | May 2021 |
| Confirmation of successful node proposals | June 2021 |
| Co-design of information and functional requirements | July 2021 - November 2021 |
| Distributed infrastructure build phase | December 2021 - June 2023 |
Scope
This call is for organisations to be HeSANDA nodes. HeSANDA nodes will provide the following functions:
- Enable access to clinical trials data
- Hold data from completed trials (unless prohibited by regulatory compliance)
- Provide descriptions of that data (descriptive metadata) using standard
- structure
- semantics
- transfer protocols
- Support common access arrangements to the data
- Support common request and reporting processes
Nodes will need to contribute:
- Data from nominated clinical trials
- Design and development of HeSANDA infrastructure
- Ongoing operation of HeSANDA infrastructure
Investment
The ARDC proposes to provide co-investment up to $3m in total to establish 10-15 HeSANDA infrastructure nodes.
The ARDC recognises that the COVID-19 situation has placed financial constraints on many organisations, which are restricting the funds available for infrastructure projects. To assist in the continued development of e-research infrastructure, 1:1 matching co-investment will not be mandatory for this open call; however, the level of co-investment will form part of the Proposal evaluation criteria.
The Infrastructure Development phase will begin mid-2021 and be completed over a two year period. The new digital infrastructure will be maintained on an ongoing basis by the project partners following the formal project phase.
Eligibility
Registrations of Interest will be accepted from Australian organisations including public and private sector, research institutions (such as universities, publicly funded research agencies, and medical research institutes), and other relevant stakeholders.
Proposals will be accepted only from groups or networks of organisations who together can propose a considerable node.
Note that the ARDC will need to contract with a legal entity.