SPHN and BioMedIT: an overview of the Swiss research data infrastructure

What is SPHN?

The Swiss Personalized Health Network (SPHN) provides the infrastructure for research with health data in Switzerland. It works on behalf of the federal government, under the responsibility of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences (SAMS, in German SAMW) and together with the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics.

Period	Phase	Federal funding according to SPHN
2017–2020	First funding period of the national initiative	CHF 68 million
2021–2024	Second funding period, initiative concluded at the end of 2024	CHF 67 million
2025–2028	Consolidation as a permanent infrastructure	CHF 20.7 million for the Data Coordination Center (DCC)

Since 2025, SAMS has held the mandate for the DCC. SPHN’s funding of individual research projects ended with the initiative; projects now pay fees for services. The tasks in the mandate include national coordination, the legal and ethical framework, interoperability, a platform for searching and analysing, BioMedIT, a national repository for genetic data and standardised data from hospitals (“National Data Streams”).

How does data get from the hospital into research?

1. Describe: The hospital maps its data in SPHN’s Semantic Interoperability Framework. This combines a common data set with an exchange format based on RDF and refers to terminologies such as SNOMED CT, LOINC, ICD-10-GM, ATC and CHOP.
2. Convert: The SPHN Connector, an open-source tool, runs in the hospital, converts the data into the RDF format, removes details that make a person identifiable and checks quality.
3. Transfer: The data goes to BioMedIT in encrypted form.
4. Analyse: Researchers work in a separate protected area for each project and export only non-sensitive or aggregated results.

Whether a hospital may pass on data is governed by the Human Research Act (HRA, in German HFG): as a rule with the consent of the patients (general consent) or with the approval of an ethics committee.

What is BioMedIT?

BioMedIT is a project of the SIB and part of SPHN: a secure platform for research with sensitive data. The sites in Basel, Lausanne and Zurich form a joint security zone. Research groups manage the people, keys and data transfers of their project through a portal; sign-in uses two factors. BioMedIT is open to universities, research institutes, hospitals and service providers in Switzerland.

How does this differ from the German approach?

	Switzerland (SPHN)	Germany (MII and NUM)
Format	Own framework, exchange via RDF	Core data set in FHIR
Preparation	In the hospital with the SPHN Connector	In the data integration centre of each university hospital
Analysis	Centrally in BioMedIT	Provided via the sites, application via the FDPG
Responsible body	SAMS with SIB, federal mandate until 2028	University hospitals, NUM; MII funding until 2026

MII is the German Medical Informatics Initiative, NUM the Network University Medicine and FDPG the German Portal for Medical Research Data. More on the German approach in the guides “What is a data integration centre?” and “MII, NUM, FDPG from 2027”.

Does an AI platform in the hospital get access to SPHN data?

No. SPHN and BioMedIT serve approved research projects. An AI platform that a hospital introduces for daily work operates on documents, guidelines, emails and connected systems, with the permissions of the person. The hospital releases data for research project by project, on the basis of the HRA and through its own committees. The contacts for this are the hospital’s data team and SPHN, not the platform provider.

How does this work with basebox?

basebox offers the cloud and the server in Switzerland. Our hardware partner FAST LTA delivers the Class 1 to 3 servers for your organisation to Switzerland. basebox does not yet operate a server in a Swiss data centre for the cloud; this is in progress, by 2027 at the latest. Until then, the cloud runs for Swiss customers too in Germany. For Swiss customers there is a supplement to the DPA under the FADP and a confidentiality agreement under Art. 321 of the Swiss Criminal Code (see Security: Switzerland).

basebox connects any system that provides its data through an interface; the hospital grants the access. For research, basebox only connects data sets that your organisation releases for this purpose. Researchers get a personal key for the OpenAI-compatible API; every call runs with the person’s permissions and is recorded in the audit log.