The Swiss Personalized Health Network is a national data infrastructure under the responsibility of the SAMS in collaboration with the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics. SPHN has been operative since 2017 and has been acknowledged as a sustainable part of the Swiss research infrastructure landscape in the ERI Dispatch 2025–2028.
The Swiss Personalized Health Network (SPHN) was launched in 2017 as a national funding initiative in personalized medicine (Nationale Förderinitiative Personalisierte Medizin), according to the Education, Research and Innovation (ERI) Dispatch 2017-2020, with a budget of 68 Mio CHF. The ERI Dispatch 2021–2024 ensured the continuation of the initiative with 67 Mio CHF. SPHN is mandated by State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) and the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) and managed by the SAMS and the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics.
The foundations of SPHN
As president of the SAMS from 2011 to 2016, Prof. Peter Meier-Abt realized that the federal structure of Switzerland’s healthcare sector – with five university hospitals, 26 cantonal hospitals, and numerous regional hospitals, each with its own data infrastructure, rules, and guidelines – constituted an obstacle to the development of cutting-edge research and high-quality medical care. Moreover, national registries for major diseases or biobanks were non-existent. Prof. Meier-Abt played a decisive role in defining the concept for the future SPHN and tirelessly advocated for it among the federal government, the cantons, universities, colleagues, and hospitals. Thanks to his dedication, the groundbreaking project could be implemented and further developed.
The foundations of SPHN had been laid 2014, as the SERI and ERI actors acknowledged the need for a national initiative to improve the framework conditions in Switzerland to promote data-driven personalized health research. It was recognized that the Swiss healthcare system produced a high density of high-quality data, but investments were needed to make those data findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR). With these investments, Switzerland was to be able to compete internationally in the scientific field of data-driven medicine, despite its relatively small population.
SPHN’s main aims were
- to establish a national network in personalized health involving all relevant research institutions
- join forces nationally and internationally
- build a national data infrastructure for personalized health research
- fund personalized health research.
Around the time when SPHN was launched, the ETH Domain launched two so-called «specific focus areas» in the field: Personalized Health and Related Technologies (PHRT) and the Swiss Data Science Center (SDSC). Especially SPHN and PHRT have benefited from many synergies.
Years 2017-2024
Since 2017, SPHN has established data infrastructures of national relevance, enabled personalized health research along the full researcher and data journey, supported researchers as well as data providers, and built a strong network of stakeholders across Switzerland. SPHN has been able to lower cultural and technical barriers towards data sharing, enabling high-quality research to ultimately improve patient care.
A main driver of SPHN’s achievements until today was Prof. Urs Frey, SPHN President from 2019 to 2024. As Medical Director of the University Children’s Hospital Basel and Chair of Pediatrics at the University of Basel, as well as respected researcher in Pediatrics and Epidemiology, Urs Frey was well positioned to advance the mission of SPHN. With his persuasiveness, energy and great humanity, Urs Frey has led SPHN to where it is today: a national research data infrastructure for the next generation of researchers.
A comprehensive overview of the activities, achievements, and learnings of the SPHN initiative 2017–2024 will be published by SPHN in autumn 2026.