Hello Christian! Thanks for talking to us today. Where did the idea for the lung cancer charity cycle come from?
Phil Gribbon (IDERHA’s academic lead) and I cycle because we like to have fun – and like others to have it as well. We were at a charity cycling event together and we thought, hey, we’re working on lung cancer. Let’s do a cycle and raise some money for lung cancer!
Within IDERHA we always aim to open our meetings with a sporting analogy. Phil and I both like cycling and sometimes we cycle together in Hamburg. And we thought, the next IDERHA project meeting will be in Utrecht at one of the IDERHA partner’s premises… and Utrecht is the city of cycling… so why not cycle from Hamburg to Utrecht for the meeting and raise some money for lung cancer research.
What kind of solutions for lung cancer is IDERHA working on?
IDERHA is driving access to health data in a federated way that is aligned with the requirements of the European Health Data Space and protects the data of citizens. Our project will help to identify citizens at risk of developing lung cancer. More and more lung cancer screening programmes are being established throughout Europe but the pre-selection of people at risk of lung cancer is pretty undefined, apart from smoking there’s very little information available. We hope that we can better personalise the risk profile for lung cancer by using a large amount of data and applying AI to it. This will help us to more accurately identify people that should be screened. Usually lung cancer is caught at a late stage when only palliative treatments are available, but with screening programmes, people can be treated earlier and curative treatments might become possible. So IDERHA are playing a role on the journey to make lung cancer curable – a large amount of health data can help to take lung cancer research to the next level.
You said that you always start your meetings with a sports event? What sports have you covered?
We opened up IDERHA at the very beginning when the Ocean Race 2023, a team sailing race, was taking place.
Sailing is a team sport in which everyone has a different role – like a public-private partnership. There was an accident in the Ocean Race at the polar circle where they fixed the mast, and we said, this is a great example: things will also happen in the project, things will go wrong but we can fix it. We have different experts from different areas taking part and we need to work together and never lose sight of where we want to go.
In sailing, it’s constant course correction. The wind changes, the current changes etc. And no one person is responsible for everything: you’ve got someone who’s responsible for weather, you’ve got someone who’s responsible for technology, you’ve got someone who’s responsible for the material. Only together can this whole thing be successful.
That’s a great analogy. What did you do for the next meeting?
For the next IDERHA meeting, we took a peloton approach as we were then at full speed in the project. We actually rode into the meeting in our cycling gear! Cycling is a team sport because in pelotons you ride close to each other so that everyone is in each other’s wind shade and then you change.
The peloton approach has a particular parallel within an IHI research project because we constantly change which team is in the lead. For some things, it’s the technological team in the lead, for others it’s the legal and data privacy teams, at other times it’s data access or communications or ethics. At different times different people lead and that is the peloton approach.
Does linking sports to IDERHA help to break the ice for your meetings?
One of the realities nowadays is that we meet online and we are so many people with different backgrounds, different priorities, different characters. We aim to motivate our work packages to meet face to face and when it’s of value, we try to have a series of face-to-face in smaller groups. Bonding and relationship-building is constant work and it’s not something to take for granted.
How did you open the last meeting?
Last time, we opened with soccer. Phil and I came in wearing soccer jerseys and kicked the ball between us. We are both fans of soccer teams that are not the top of the top but have amazing team and fan spirit. We wanted to draw a parallel and make it clear that we as a project a right to be here, and we don’t have to be afraid of the major companies or the Champions League! Phil’s team Newcastle United and my team St Pauli have the strongest team community and we always try to drive some of that team spirit.
Do you think that the sports openings have helped to bond the team and cement the long-term success of IDERHA?
I like analogies and having fun – sports is something everyone can relate to from a different setting. It should be fun, it is also very competitive by nature – and fair play plays an enormous role. I very much believe that one can only succeed with the right team spirit – especially in such a complex project and over such a long period of time (five years). This needs to be established right from the start and continuously be focused on.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be sports either – another great example of our team community is that we have an amazing former opera singer, who spontaneously sang for us during one of the meetings.
What do you think the sport for the next meeting is going to be?
I cannot tell you because I don’t know what our next sports opening is going to be. Suggestions from the project team range from water ballet, to dancing… let’s see!
This team-building approach is really important for the project partners overall, but especially the early-stage researchers I imagine.
We’ve created an active community for early career researchers; we’ve established a mentorship programme where the older crowd mentor the PhD students. The PhD students are doing the real work – without them we would be nowhere. We’re investing a lot to make sure that they get the best out of the project – not only from a research perspective but also from a personal development perspective. We’ve seen someone moving out of R&D and into a company. They’re at a crucial point in their career, it’s a unique opportunity to network and we want to pave the way for that aswell. It’s about people and expertise, that’s what we believe.
What’s next for IDERHA?
We’re approaching the mid-point of the project so we are investigating how to leverage the start-up company mentality that we’ve nurtured in this project. We’re on the brink of setting up a company, not a foundation, because we want to be able to scale, invest etc.
We started to work with major medical associations to help them to access each others’ data in a safe way that preserves patients’ rights. Often data is in different countries and it can’t be connected. We will offer them a service that connects the data while keeping within the data privacy laws and aligning with the ambitions and principles of the European Health Data Space (EHDS). This addresses a core need to make digital-enabled personal health care a reality – and with our use case, helping to detect lung cancer earlier and even make it curable. Data saves lives! That’s our main vision – and we need to keep the momentum going!