After nine months we’ve achieved one of the major first milestones which is that we do have an operational platform so that data management infrastructure is established. We’re now piloting that so that’s really a major step forward from where we started from.

What are the main challenges you’ve had to overcome so far?

Besides some obvious technical challenges and then the whole thing around the hosting and the infrastructure and so on, a continuous challenge is of course everything that has to do with the regulatory data privacy type issues and everything that is evolving around that.

What challenges does the new legislation bring?

The GDPR regulation is coming into effect in Europe so that’s of course an important factor that we have to take into account. There are still a bit of unknowns, gradually it’s starting to shape out. So there is also a growing consensus amongst us, with some of the other work packages like Work Package 8, on how actually our practical approach should be to address those concerns, so those requirements vis-à-vis the GDPR regulation.

Is the Harmony project something that you think will have exciting outcomes?

Absolutely, the ability to establish a data platform that contains all these datasets that at the end of the day should result in better outcomes for our patients is something that we should be aiming for and that we should be also proud of if we can pull it off.