Building a trusted ecosystem to accelerate research: the Australian Cardiovascular disease Data Commons
A new paper describing the progress and vision of the Australian Cardiovascular disease Data Commons (ACDC) project has been published in Nature Reviews Cardiology. This national-scale project is designed to accelerate the fight against Australia’s single biggest killer through creating a comprehensive, secure, scalable and internationally integrated data infrastructure, offering cardiovascular researchers around the world the opportunity to uncover the hidden drivers of disease risk and progression, as well as patient recovery and survivorship.
Authors Corey Giles and Peter J. Meikle from the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute (Baker Institute) describe how the ACDC project will provide researchers with secure access to pooled data from approximately 400,000 individuals across 18 clinical and population cohorts within Australia.
These cohorts contain a wealth of diverse information, including rich omics phenotyping, genotyping data, longitudinal cardiovascular outcomes, and comprehensive imaging data.
The path to a comprehensive, secure, scalable, and internationally integrated data infrastructure connected to global best practice analysis platforms includes many complex phases. Led by the Baker Institute, contributions from a diverse group of participants are co-ordinated by BioCommons. Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, ACvA, University of Sydney, 23Strands, CSL Limited, BioCommons, data custodians and other partners are working together on infrastructure establishment, cohort onboarding and harmonisation, testing, validation, use case exploration, user experience, documentation, training, governance and intellectual property arrangements. BioCommons leads the implementation of the critical digital infrastructure underpinning ACDC as part of the Australian BioCommons Human Genome Informatics activity.
The highly collaborative project receives advice and oversight from a multi-disciplinary Scientific Advisory Committee made up of clinicians, researchers, digital infrastructure experts, and consumer representatives. The group has representatives from BioCommons, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, University of Sydney, University of Tasmania, Busselton Health Study, RENCI, NHLBI, University of Chicago, Broad Institute, HeartBeat Victoria, as well as a large number of data custodians. They are responsible for shaping the scientific objectives of the platform and providing feedback to the Project Management Committee to ensure that the development and implementation of the ACDC platform aligns with those objectives.
The ACDC project is synchronising the efforts and experiences of a large and diverse group of experts who together can advance the early detection of disease processes and the discovery of new disease-modifying pathways that contribute to cardiovascular disease development.
Read the paper Building the Australian Cardiovascular disease Data Commons.
Learn more about how BioCommons is implementing the ACDC infrastructure.
The ACDC project is led by the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute and funded by Bioplatforms Australia and the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF 2022 National Critical Research Infrastructure Grant: Building an Australian Cardiovascular disease Data Commons). Additional contributions are being made by the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, ACvA, University of Sydney, 23Strands, CSL Limited, Australian BioCommons, data custodians and other partners.
