The governance principles of the Observatories are already starting to take shape

The foundation work for establishing the national and European observatories is well under way.  The principles behind the governance of these new bodies have been written and agreed by the H2O Steering Committee at the end of January. These nine principles, together with the legal groundwork and the description of data flows and consents, form part of the first formal deliverable from the project that is currently being drafted: the “business architecture” of H2O.

In the first three countries – Austria, the Netherlands and Germany – workshops have already been held to kick off the discussions on how the new, not for profit, independent observatories are set up.  With these guiding principles, the work to set up these new organisations will be aligned across countries, and H2O will be able to build on this foundation to extend to more countries and more disease areas in the future.