TrialBridge enables African and European research institutions to run joint infectious disease studies as equal partners — with patient data that never crosses a national border.
Africa carries 25% of the global disease burden yet hosts less than 3% of global clinical trials. The bottleneck is not clinical capacity — it is the absence of shared digital and governance infrastructure.
TrialBridge is not a data platform. It is a structured collaboration model — supported by digital tools — that makes African and European institutions equal partners in infectious disease research.
Pre-negotiated, legally validated data sharing agreement templates simultaneously compliant with POPIA, Nigeria's NDPA, and EU GDPR — developed with African and European legal experts in Year 1. Freely available to any African–European research consortium after the project ends.
A common data dictionary and standardised case definitions for malaria, TB, and HIV — co-designed with African and European clinical partners. An FHIR R4-compliant harmonisation layer that normalises outputs from OpenMRS, DHIS2, and paper-based systems into a single research-ready format without replacing existing tools.
An offline-first data capture app for African clinical sites. Patient data is encrypted at point of entry and stored locally — it never leaves the country. European researchers access anonymised, query-ready datasets via a secure portal. Federated query architecture means results return as aggregate outputs only. Data sovereignty is enforced architecturally, not just contractually.
CTCAN (Clinical Trials Community Africa Network), funded by EDCTP3, is building a registry of African clinical trial sites and regulatory information to support trial start-up. CTCAN's own published roadmap identifies a federated data-sharing network as a critical next step.
"Which African sites exist and are ready to run a trial?"
"How do those sites and their European partners run the study securely and equitably once it begins?"
TrialBridge integrates directly with the CTC platform and contributes standardised regulatory and compliance data back to CTCAN's network — strengthening the overall EDCTP digital ecosystem.
Every architecture decision is driven by the constraints of Sub-Saharan African clinical research settings: intermittent connectivity, diverse existing systems, and strict data sovereignty requirements.
African institutions co-lead the project — not as data collectors, but as co-investigators with structural control over their own data.
Formal grant coordinator, legal framework lead, Horizon Europe anchor, co-publication network
Platform architecture, federated data layer, offline app, researcher portal, FHIR integration — Lagos, Nigeria
Clinical co-design, governance co-development, data collection, ethics oversight across West & East Africa
| EDCTP3 Call Objective | How TrialBridge responds |
|---|---|
| Digital innovation and AI for healthcare systems | Federated query engine with AI-assisted data harmonisation across multi-site African datasets |
| Integration of digital tools in clinical research | FHIR-compliant layer integrating with OpenMRS, DHIS2, and the CTC platform without replacing existing tools |
| Strengthening research capacity and knowledge sharing | African sites co-lead governance design; open-source legal templates freely available to the broader research community |
| Scaling validated digital health solutions | Builds on CTCAN's established network; governance templates reusable across any African–European research partnership |
| African–European research institution collaboration | African institutions control data access architecturally; co-authorship protocols embedded in platform design; structural co-leadership model |
We are seeking EU academic institutions, African clinical research sites, and public health organisations to join the TrialBridge consortium ahead of the September 2026 EDCTP3 deadline.