EU Innovation Radar Spotlights ORCHESTRA Data Portal: Elevating Pandemic Preparedness Through Cohort Data

The European Commission’s Innovation Radar has recognised the ORCHESTRA Data Portal - coordinated by the University of Verona (UNIVR) - as an innovation in the “Exploring” phase, highlighting its notable market creation potential in the health data domain.

The ORCHESTRA Data Portal is a federated, secure, and transparent gateway to large-scale, standardized cohort data. Through its modular design - encompassing data exploration, metadata standards, managed access, open data, and publication outputs - it is uniquely positioned to:

• Enhance pandemic preparedness by freeing analytical access to rich, distributed datasets;

• Enable multi-disciplinary research workflows, bridging epidemiology, clinical science, and health policy;

• Support reproducibility and trust via open science principles and structured governance.

A Unified Access Point for Cohort Research

At the heart of the ORCHESTRA ecosystem, the Data Portal serves as a centralized interface that facilitates open, structured access to cohort data collected throughout the pandemic. It embodies the principles of Open Science, offering access to data and tools that drive collaborative research and public health interventions.

Rich, Standardized Metadata and Cohort Coverage

Through its Data Explorer module, users can navigate metadata from over 600,000 patient records, categorized into key cohort types—COVID-19 infected individuals, the general population, vulnerable groups, and healthcare workers.

The accompanying Data Dictionary ensures interoperability and research rigor by aligning variables with major international terminologies, including LOINC, SNOMED CT, and NCIt, and standardizing them across cohorts via the ORCHESTRA Code Data Set (OcDeC).

Secure Yet Flexible Data Access

The portal features a structured request process: researchers submit cohort- and variable-specific forms outlining their research questions. Upon approval, data - pseudonymized and tailored - can be retrieved either via Question-Oriented Data Export or through Federated Data Analysis, enabling decentralized yet secure research workflows.

Enhancing Transparency and Research Utility

Additional modules of the portal include:

• A Public Use File, featuring anonymized COVID-19 patient data accompanied by exploratory visualizations.

• A Publication Dashboard, indexing over 100 peer-reviewed outputs by cohort, work package, and journal—spanning topics such as clinical outcomes, long-term sequelae, biobanking, genomics, and health economics.

• A Biobank overview, detailing available biological samples and their characteristics.

Why Innovation Radar Recognition Matter

By designating the Data Portal as “Exploring,” the Innovation Radar signals that this project is transitioning from research to real-world deployment, possessing both scientific robustness and market readiness. Moreover, it demonstrates not only academic excellence but also its readiness to influence healthcare systems and public health responses across Europe and beyond.

The Innovation Radar framework, indeed, bolsters awareness among investors, health institutions, and policymakers, highlighting innovations with solid technical foundations and scalable societal impact.

Find out more about the ORCHESTRA project: https://www.id-care.net/projects/orchestra-

The ORCHESTRA project, coordinated by Prof. Tacconelli and the ID-CARE team at the University of Verona, is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and started on December 2020 with the aim of tackling the coronavirus pandemic.

The project involves 37 partners from 15 countries, establishing an international large-scale-cohort to generate rigorous evidence in the field of prevention and treatment of SARS-CoV-2 infection. The identification of clinical and laboratory predictors to reduce severity and hospitalisation of COVID-19 and to prevent long COVID are among the main objectives of the project.