The UN World Health Organization notes in its constitution that “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. Health is hence much more than just a biomedical condition.
The Swiss Cause of Health Cohort initiative is built on the premise that an individual's health is determined by the Health Triangle, a complex interplay between a unique individual (genome), the environment, and the individual’s behaviour in the environment.
To understand this complexity we need standardized longitudinal sets of health data from millions of people. Such data sets form the basis of precision health or P4 (personalized, predictive, preventive and participatory) health.
Switzerland has a long tradition in classical health cohorts (CoLaus, Sapladia, AIDS, Swiss Transplant). However, these cohorts are small (< 10’000 participants) and solely based on examinations in hospitals, thus expensive to maintain.
The development of smartphone-based sensors, the increasing use of health related apps and wearables, and the rapidly decreasing costs in genome sequencing, give hope for the establishment of much larger digital health cohorts (>100’000), that rely on the active participation of citizens (citizen science).
The “Swiss Cause of Health Cohort” is initiated by swiss scientists, who make their personal data available to pave the way for superior personalized medicine in Switzerland. A secure database with unique governance structure (non-profit citizen-controlled MIDATA cooperative) allows individuals to control their own data.
The cohort is open for everyone to join, and scalable within Europe.
For questions about this project, please contact us via email: