The relevance of vitamin D for infections after kidney transplantation is poorly defined. 25‐OH vitamin D (25‐OHD) levels of 135 kidney transplant recipients, enrolled in the Swiss Transplant Cohort Study, were determined peri‐transplant and 6 months post‐transplant. Logistic regression was used to address the associations of 25‐OHD and overall infections and bacterial infections, respectively. For the first 6 months post‐transplant, 25‐OHD peri‐transplant, and for the second period (after 6 to 30 months post‐transplant), 25‐OHD at 6 months post‐transplant was considered. Vitamin D deficiency was common peri‐transplant and remained highly prevalent 6 months after transplantation despite frequent supplementation. Median 25‐OHD levels increased from 12.0 ng/mL (IQR 5.3‐19.5) peri‐transplant to 16.5 ng/mL (IQR 10.6‐22.6) 6 months post‐transplant (P = .005). We did not detect a significant association between 25‐OHD and overall infections (adjusted odds ratio (aOR) 1.05, 95% confidence interval (95%CI) 0.44‐2.51; aOR 0.67, 95%CI 0.31‐1.43) or bacterial infections (aOR 0.79, 95%CI 0.32‐1.96; aOR 0.79, 95%CI 0.35‐1.75) for the first and second period. To conclude, at both time points, vitamin D deficiency was observed in more than 50% of kidney recipients, albeit an increase in 25‐OHD in the longitudinal course was observed. No significant association between 25‐OHD and infections was detected.

Fig. 1.Manhattan plot visualizing genome-wide association of 61 cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (cSCC)-organ transplant recipients (OTRs) and 908 skin cancer negative-OTRs, showing -log10 p-value of SNPtest along chromosomes.Horizontal red line represents the significant threshold p-value of 5×10 -8 .Arrow indicates single nucleotide polymorphism rs34567942 with the most prominent p-value.

Accidental hypothermia could be listed as an ‘orphan disease,’ since mild hypothermia is common but has no severe medical consequences, whereas severe hypothermia is rare and life-threatening. In order to increase our knowledge, find new outcome predictors, and propose better guidelines for the treatment of deep accidental hypothermia victims, we created the International Hypothermia Registry (IHR: https://www.hypothermia-registry.org), which will allow us to gather a large number of cases in order to achieve statistical significance and issue evidence-based recommendations.

In order to reuse data for clinical research it is then necessary to overcome two main challenges -to formalize data sources and to increase the portability. Once the challenge is resolved, it then will allow research applications to reuse clinical data. In this paper, three data models such as entity-attribute-value, ontological and data-driven are described. Their further implementation at University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG) in the data integration methodologies for operational healthcare data sources of the European projects such as DebugIT and EHR4CR and national project the Swiss Transplant Cohort Study are explained. In these methodologies the clinical data are either aligned according to standardised terminologies using different processing techniques or transformed and loaded directly to data models. Then these models are compared and discussed based on the quality criteria. The comparison shows that the described data models are strongly dependent on the objectives of the projects.

Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) belong to healthcare problems impacting the quality of life and inducing important costs for the healthcare system. There is still no magical cure against this kind of diseases, but many promising therapies are under investigation. In order to study the efficiency and side effects of the existing drugs and to evaluate new ones, large numbers of patients are followed in long term cohort studies. The particular constraints associated to the follow up of patients with IBD require the implementation of adapted and efficient tools. On the one hand, clinicians must be able to perform daily changes to the patient treatment in order to adapt it for its best efficiency and react to side effects. On the other hand, the tool must provide long term view on the data to allow large scale analyses regarding the efficiency of the investigated treatment. There are few solutions allowing a clear visualization of the treatment plan of the patients in the long term that indicates clearly the changes and the adverse events. In this work, we propose a new integrated tool that offers a clear temporal view over the patients' treatment.

In Switzerland, organ procurement is well organized at the national-level but transplant outcomes have not been systematically monitored so far. Therefore, a novel project, the Swiss Transplant Cohort Study (STCS), was established. The STCS is a prospective multicentre study, designed as a dynamic cohort, which enrolls all solid organ recipients at the national level. The features of the STCS are a flexible patient-case system that allows capturing all transplant scenarios and collection of patient-specific and allograft-specific data. Beyond comprehensive clinical data, specific focus is directed at psychosocial and behavioral factors, infectious disease development, and bio-banking. Between May 2008 and end of 2011, the six Swiss transplant centers recruited 1,677 patients involving 1,721 transplantations, and a total of 1,800 organs implanted in 15 different transplantation scenarios. 10 % of all patients underwent re-transplantation and 3% had a second transplantation, either in the past or during follow-up. 34% of all kidney allografts originated from living donation. Until the end of 2011 we observed 4,385 infection episodes in our patient population. The STCS showed operative capabilities to collect high-quality data and to adequately reflect the complexity of the post-transplantation process. The STCS represents a promising novel project for comparative effectiveness research in transplantation medicine.

Die Schweizerische Transplantationskohortenstudie (STCS) ist eine prospektive offene Kohortenstudie, die organubergreifend alle Transplantatempfanger, die ihre Zustimmung zur Mitwirkung geben, zum Zeitpunkt der Transplantation einschliesst. Patienten auf der Warteliste fur solide Organe werden vor erfolgter Transplantation um ihre Einwilligung zur Partizipation angefragt, Patienten fur eine Stammzelltransplantation zum Zeitpunkt der Transplantation. Die Ethikkommissionen aller partizipierenden Zentren haben Anfang 2008 die Studie gutgeheissen. Die STCS begann ab 2. Mai 2008 Patientinnen und Patienten einzuschliessen und prospektiv zu beobachten. Es ist wichtig zu bemerken, dass ein sogenannter minimaler Datensatz, der vom Gesetzgeber vorgeschrieben ist, bei allen Patienten erfasst werden muss. Mit der Zustimmung ermoglicht der Patient eine breitere Datenerfassung und auch das Asservieren von Blutproben.