Partners and Collaborators

Partners

Pandemic Sciences Institute, University of Oxford

The GloPID-R Research & Policy team is based within the Policy and Practice Research Group at the University of Oxford’s Pandemic Sciences Institute (PSI). PSI is a research institute with a mission to discover, create and enable practical solutions to infectious disease threats worldwide. The University is a key technical partner to the GloPID-R Secretariat, providing expert scientific, research and policy contributions in the context of its extensive experience and international networks.

GloPID-R

GloPID-R is a global alliance of research funding organisations, facilitating coordinated research related to new and emerging infectious diseases with epidemic and pandemic potential. GloPID-R’s objectives are to:

Support research preparedness & rapid response to outbreaks of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases.
Promote collaboration & coordination among funders based on common goals and principles to find solutions for global problems, such as data sharing and research capacity building in low- and middle- income Countries (LMICs)
Identify gaps to align funding with research needs, especially in LMICs.

The GloPID-R Research & Policy Team are leading the Pandemic PACT programme from the PSI as a key partner to the GloPID-R Central Secretariat based at the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin. The GloPID-R Research & Policy team lead many research, policy and scientific support activities to support the GloPID-R membership.

UKCDR

The UK Collaborative on Development Research (UKCDR) brings together government and research funders working in international development. UKCDR is a neutral and impartial entity and works to amplify the value and impact of research for global development by promoting coherence, collaboration, and joint action among UK research funders.

To meet their strategic priorities, UKCDR’s strategy leans on three pillars:

Mapping, analysis, and foresight
Convening for joint action
Sharing information and best practice

These pillars all feed into the overarching ambition to use UKCDR’s expertise and collective voice.

In 2020, GloPID-R and UKCDR collaborated on the COVID-19 Research Coordination and Learning initiative (COVID CIRCLE) whose aim was to enable the alignment of research funders towards a coherent effort for supporting COVID-19 research in, for and with low- and middle-income countries. To help achieve this, a database of funded research projects globally related to COVID-19 was launched in April 2020. By November 2024, the database contained 21.6k research projects worth (at least) $8.5 billion taking place across 161 countries. These projects were awarded by more than 370 funders around the world.

GloPID-R and UKCDR will continue their relationship to support activities related to the Pandemic PACT Grants Tracker; with UKCDR providing their expertise in data mapping and analysis.

Collaborators

Cochrane Response

Cochrane Response is Cochrane’s evidence consultancy unit, which provides a broad range of literature review and evidence synthesis services to international policymakers, guideline developers, government agencies and research groups to support evidence-informed healthcare decision-making.

For the RRNAs, Cochrane Response has provided surge capacity to set up the initial RRNAs and assist in staff training and development.

Cochrane South Africa

Cochrane South Africa (SA) is part of the global, independent Cochrane network of researchers, professionals, patients, carers and people interested in health. Their mission is to promote evidence-informed healthcare decision-making in South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa by producing high-quality, relevant, accessible systematic reviews and other synthesised research evidence. Cochrane South Africa hosts two clinical trial registry databases, the Pan African Clinical Trials Registry (PACTR), a WHO primary register, and the South African National Clinical Trial Register (SANCTR).

Cochrane SA supports the Pandemic PACT programme by contributing to the Rapid Research Needs Appraisals (RRNAs) and bringing key knowledge synthesis expertise and relevant regional context. Cochrane SA is hosted at the SA MRC, which is also hosting the GloPID-R Africa Hub.

Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford

The Computational Health Informatics (CHI) Lab within the Department of Engineering Science brings AI expertise and a wealth of experience in machine learning for clinical and healthcare data analysis.

For Pandemic PACT, they have developed state-of-the-art generative AI and Natural-Language Processing (NLP) models that enable coding automation and assists us in processing high volumes of data. They will support with continuous improvements to the programme.

GO FAIR Foundation

The GO FAIR Foundation supports efforts toward the practical, yet rigorous implementation of the FAIR Guiding Principles. The GO FAIR Foundation has supported Pandemic PACT by providing advice regarding the optimisation of FAIR (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reuse) in its data collection and sharing. The GO FAIR Foundation’s contributions to the Pandemic PACT programme were supported by a grant from ZonMw.

Infectious Diseases Data Observatory (IDDO), University of Oxford

The Infectious Diseases Data Observatory (IDDO) exists to promote the reuse of individual participant data across the global infectious disease community. IDDO curates submitted data from many different sources in-house, to produce freely available harmonised datasets, enabling scientists to answer new research questions from existing data.

IDDO is supporting the development of the Pandemic PACT tool by evaluating how to optimise the linkage of funded projects to registered clinical trials and publications, encompassing an assessment on the quality of linked data and an exploration on various methods for data linkage.