Missions and expertise

Cohorts and projects supported by a Programme d'Investissement d'Avenir (PIA)

France Cohortes offers a package of integrated services for cohorts and projects supported by a PIA.

France has cohorts at the highest international scientific level. These cohorts are well-established infrastructures in the public health research landscape. They are either generalist, covering the general population of adults and/or children, or specialised in particular pathologies.

To address the challenges faced by cohorts, France Cohortes consolidates a center of resources and services for researchers to:

• Sustain and enhance the scientific use of the data produced
• Strengthen the level of protection and confidentiality of participants' data,
• Facilitate their access to data, respecting ethical and regulatory frameworks.

Support functions for data collect, cleaning and analysis

France Cohortes offers support functions ranging from data collection - development and administration of computerized questionnaires, integration of data from clinical examinations and measuring devices - to the structuring, cleaning, and statistical analysis of such data.

A powerful, secure hosting solution

Hosting is done within the framework on data protection and the security repository of the national health data system (SNDS), through an efficient, secure certified “health data hosting” infrastructure to guarantee the security and traceability of processing, to make it impossible to disseminate data, and to document GDPR compliance in a systematic, centralized manner.

Regulatory support from conception to end of cohort follow-up

The service offering includes support for obtaining regulatory authorizations from the French Data Protection Authority (CNIL), the Ethical Research Committees, the Ethics and Scientific Committee for Research, studies and assessments in the field of health (CESRESS) etc., and support for the development of data sharing plans, the development of industrial partnerships via Inserm Transfert, etc.

Support for findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable data (FAIR)

France Cohortes aims to adopt best practices in compliance with FAIR principles to promote data visibility, interoperability, and reuse. This approach is integrated from the inception of projects and throughout the data lifecycle. This support materialises through proposals, training, and suitable tools.