“What makes anDREa with myDRE unique?”

The simple answer is: myDRE is an organisational solution with the aim to unburden and to empower researchers and stakeholders in dealing with the challenges they face. anDREa achieves this by working in a for-by-with mode and making it easy to rapidly deploy suitable infrastructure for a wide variety of data-related work. 

A little too generic? Allow me to provide some evidence. Please understand while myDRE as a solution is easy to implement and use, the problem it solves is quite complicated. Meaning the devil is in the details.

Where and why it all started

myDRE finds its origins in the University Medical Centers (UMCs) to solve a complicated problem with respect to secondary use of health data. anDREa BV was founded to make it possible others don’t need to reinvent the wheel. That said, close ties still exist; anDREa BV is fully owned by 3 UMCs, the supervisory board are C-levels of UMCs, the advisory board also advises their UMC, and biweekly meetings with local Research Support. On top of that, we have a collaboration agreement with a Technical University. We work in a by-for-with mode with but one objective: ensure alignment with the objectives, needs, and challenges in the here-and-now, and in the future.

Even when writing this down I think, wow, isn’t this a bit over the top? Well, no. Allow me to describe the context: storing and processing of data - mostly in a research setting and to a lesser extent contributing to registries.

The challenges stem from the duty-of-care, corporate accountability, GDPR, NIS 2, ISO 27001, EHDS, ransomware threats. Demonstrable compliance is key.

Data Gathering, most of Data Issuing and Data Storing is under governance, centrally managed and operated by professionals, and CAB (Change Advisory Board) controlled systems, applications, and environments. Not easy, but usually compliance can be demonstrated.

But when it comes down to Data Processing, think research setting, the story is different. The elephant in the room: compliance is difficult to demonstrate, hundreds of people - not unlikely closely collaborating with external people - each needing their own applications and tooling. This is where myDRE comes in.

What is a myDRE Workspace?

The fastest way to describe a myDRE Workspace is comparing it to the digital version of a role based access controlled (RBAC) physical office space. Without the help of central IT, local Research Support can create myDRE Workspace with five minutes of work and within 20 minutes researchers can use it. 

A myDRE Workspace is tool and data agnostic, it provides a safe, and more importantly a by the organisation trusted environment. Here the devil is in the details, not only making sure the users can do their work, but also that the challenges the organisation has, like demonstrating compliance, is being met; e.g. our exemplary ISO 27001 implementation.

myDRE lives in the here-and-now

While in research one size fits none, myDRE is a solution that already is being used by a large group of researchers who collaborate with people from all over the world. Given the number of active users month after month, it is reasonable to assume that those people can do the work they must do. So I leave out all the many user features that myDRE has to offer.

High-quality research data infrastructure

One of the features of myDRE Workspaces is the ease it can ingress data, but also egress data to other myDRE Workspaces. The result is that all clients form together a network, a high quality infrastructure to easy and securely access and move data between organisations. A network that grows with each new client.

To remain at the forefront of research, it is necessary to work on a high-quality research data infrastructure, in close coordination with the existing initiatives in this area without being dependent on subsidies. - 2013 August: NFU (Dutch Federation of University Medical Centers) - Surfing the Data Wave

Loosely couples with 3rd parties, more value

I do believe anDREa is with myDRE an important part of “existing initiatives” and provides “high-quality research data infrastructure”. Not only by providing Trusted Processing Environments for researchers, but also supporting other solutions in a loosely coupled way.

Here-and-now and working on the future here-and-now

Researchers need now a solution, not tomorrow. You like to use GPTs and LLMs, deploy and run them safely in your myDRE Workspace, or, if your organisation allows it, connect to external services.

To make sure that also the future here-and-now is suitable, we keep tabs with interest groups like Patienten Federatie Nederland work closely with stakeholders, solution providers, interest groups like Health-RI and keep track of EHDS by actively participating in HDAB-NL

So ....

It is easy to make a complicated solution for a simple problem, it is difficult to create a simple solution for a complicated problem. I think at anDREa we did a pretty good job to make it simple enough that the work can be done, but not too simple that it blocks doing the work.

Then of course there is the business case and how to implement myDRE. Reach out. We are happy to answer this and any of your questions and judge for yourself if ....

The simple answer is: myDRE is an organisational solution with the aim to unburden and to empower researchers and stakeholders in dealing with the challenges they face. anDREa achieves this by working in a for-by-with mode and making it easy to rapidly deploy suitable infrastructure for a wide variety of data-related work. 

#myDRE #andrea-cloud #SPE #TPE