Kineret: Israel's Largest Hospital Network Transformed into the OMOP common data model for collaborative research

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Clinical Data Management
• Translational Research

Background:

• Launched in 2021 by the Israeli Ministry of Health, the Kineret initiative aims to standardize clinical data across public medical centers.
• The initiative seeks to facilitate secondary data use for research and innovation, streamlining data extraction, cleaning, and sharing.
• The Directorate oversees 25 government healthcare institutions, including general, mental health, and geriatric facilities.

Purpose of the Study:

• To establish a standardized data infrastructure for secondary use of clinical data.
• To enable efficient reuse of clinical data for translational and collaborative research.
• To support intra-national and international multi-center research.

Main Methods:

• Selected the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership Common Data Model (OMOP CDM) for semantic harmonization.
• Deployed the OHDSI open-source platform (ATLAS) on a secure cloud environment.
• Established a secure, cloud-based virtual environment for approved research projects.

Main Results:

• Six medical centers successfully integrated, with clinical data harmonized into OMOP CDM as of 2025.
• A seventh center is in the final stages of integration.
• The infrastructure enables efficient feasibility assessment and exploratory data analysis.

Conclusions:

• The Kineret initiative provides a scalable, secure, and standardized data infrastructure.
• It supports both intra-national multi-center and international collaborative studies.
• Streamlined access to harmonized clinical data has significant potential to advance healthcare research globally.