Data4Life and South Korea’s EvidNet collaborate to advance global federated RWE generation

Data4Life and EvidNet have announced a collaboration to advance federated, privacy-preserving real-world evidence (RWE) generation. The partnership will integrate the Data2Evidence and FeederNet platforms to support scalable, standards-based, and responsible health research across borders. 

The partnership brings together Data4Life’s open-source research infrastructure and EvidNet’s extensive hospital network in South Korea to enhance how real-world data (RWD) can be securely and effectively used in international health research. By combining their technological and governance expertise, the two organizations aim to create a foundation for interoperable and privacy-respecting evidence generation that supports both scientific and regulatory objectives. 

At the center of this initiative is the integration of EvidNet’s FeederNet network with Data4Life’s Data2Evidence platform. The Federated E-Health Big Data for Evidence Renovation Network (FeederNet) currently connects more than 50 hospitals and includes over 70 million patient records, while Data2Evidence provides an open, modular environment for managing and analyzing health data. Both systems will align with international standards such as the observational medical outcomes partnership (OMOP) and fast healthcare interoperability resources (FHIR), ensuring that data are harmonized and ready for responsible secondary use. A joint proof-of-concept project is planned for later in 2025 to demonstrate the feasibility of this federated infrastructure in cross-border research. 

"We are excited to partner with EvidNet to advance the future of real-world evidence," said Dr Ben Illigens, Chief Executive Officer at Data4Life. "By combining our innovative Data2Evidence platform with EvidNet's established network and commitment to OMOP, we can empower researchers to generate evidence at unprecedented scale while protecting data privacy and patient sovereignty." 

The FeederNet network, established in 2019 with support from South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, was designed to enable multi-institutional collaboration through a distributed research network (DRN) model. In this approach, data remains within each participating institution, and researchers send analysis code that is executed locally. Only aggregated results are shared, meaning that “researchers cannot see any of the individual patient data at any time, and no individual patient data can be leaked from the institutions.” 

FeederNet builds on the international observational health data sciences and informatics (OHDSI) framework, which has standardized more than 928 million unique records across 41 countries, representing about 12% of the world’s population. This federated model enables comparable analyses and evidence generation across jurisdictions without transferring sensitive data.