We are excited to share the latest interview with our Head of Department, Prof. Wojciech Fendler, featured on PolitykaZdrowotna.com! Discover the new initiatives on the horizon for the Polish Medical Research Agency (ABM) and learn how one can lead one of Poland’s major research funding institutions while remaining an active researcher.

“In the perspective of the coming years, the flow of medical data, known as the Open Health Data Space, will pose a significant challenge. As Polish Medical Research Agency, we want to moderate this data flow based on the structure we are creating, namely the Regional Centers of Digital Medicine, of course in cooperation with hospitals, institutes, and units that collect this data, as well as entities like the National Health Fund and the Ministry of Health.

We aim to create a data integration system that will enable analyses not only by institutions but also by scientists, epidemiologists, statisticians, and doctors. All of this is intended to answer the questions that they themselves formulate best. We want to develop a certain mechanism for operating, sharing, and co-sharing data so that researchers within various units can conduct their studies based on their own data, but also have access to a certain space of Polish data at the individual, clinical, and systemic levels, including through the NFZ.

However, this is a major challenge associated with numerous issues related to anonymization and data transfer. Looking at the current legislative background, it seems there are several solutions we can propose. If we manage to achieve this, ABM would become a gateway to accessing data. That would be a breakthrough.”

You can read the full interview here.