News & Events

Meet the 2025 Vivli Ambassadors

Vivli is proud to announce the selection of our 2025 Vivli Ambassadors. This diverse group of researchers has been chosen for their commitment to data transparency and their leadership in advancing clinical research around the world.

“We are delighted to have the interest and involvement by these researchers to advocate for data sharing and how sharing data can lead to novel insights and add to the scientific literature,” said Rebecca Li, Vivli CEO. “We look forward to supporting these researchers as they discuss their scientific findings.”

The Vivli Ambassador program aims to amplify the impact of data sharing by supporting researchers who are using the Vivli platform in innovative and meaningful ways. This group of dedicated researchers will talk about their research at conferences and through other means of dissemination. They will participate in user interviews, provide feedback to help improve the Vivli user experience, and contribute to conversations around responsible data reuse.

We congratulate the following researchers on their selection:

  • Dr. Diego Chowell, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
  • Dr. Ashley Hopkins, Flinders University
  • Dr. David McAllister, University of Glasgow
  • Dr. Jonas Saal, University Hospital Bonn
  • Dr. Marco Valgimigli, Cardiocentro Ticino
  • Dr. Youssef Zeidan, Baptist Health South Florida

These Ambassadors represent a range of disciplines and geographic regions, and we look forward to sharing more about their work and experiences in the coming months.

Stay tuned as we highlight their stories and insights through our upcoming events and publications.

Event: 2025 Vivli Annual Meeting – Data in Action: From Contribution to Impact

Please join us at Loeb House at Harvard University Campus in Cambridge, MA, on Thursday, October 23, for the 2025 Vivli Annual Meeting, co-hosted with the MRCT Center of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard.

REGISTER

During this meeting, we will:

  • Explore how researchers, data contributors, and funders are transforming clinical trial data into real-world health impact.
  • Hear how data sharing platforms like Vivli are enabling responsible data sharing and fostering a cycle of data re-use.
  • Learn about success stories of groundbreaking data challenges, success stories and how they are shaping new developments in various fields of medicine.

The MRCT Center’s Annual Symposium will be held on Wednesday, October 22, at Ropes & Gray.

This event is free, but registration is mandatory. Please register as soon as possible, as in-person space is limited. Virtual attendees will be able to view and ask questions of presenters. Please email support@vivli.org with any questions.

REGISTER

Agenda

Welcome and Introductions Rebecca Li, CEO
Researcher and Data Contributor Panel – From Contribution to Impact in Clinical Trial Applicability to Routine Care

David McAllister, Glasgow University

Ben Rotz, Lilly

Cris Woolston, Sanofi

Data ChallengeLessons Learned from the Helmsley Type 1 Diabetes Challenge Deniz Dalton, Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust
Data ChallengeLessons Learned from AMR Data Challenges

Katherine Perez, Pfizer

Kasim Allel Henriquez, Oxford University

Harry Akligoh, Northeastern University

Researcher and Data Contributor Panel – From Contribution to Impact in Oncology

Paula Boyles, Pfizer

Jennifer O’Callaghan, Roche

Jonas Saal, University Hospital Bonn

Youssef Zeidan, American University of Beirut Medical Center

DOJ Countries of Concern – Final Ruling and

Practical Implementation for Data Sharing

David Peloquin, Ropes & Gray

Julie Wood, Vivli

Unlocking Imaging Data Sharing – A Collaboration on Imaging Anonymization Dan Boisvert, Biogen

Vivli Researcher Spotlight: Investigating whether biomarkers in Hidradenitis Suppurativa can help improve clinical and treatment decision making

Alexa Kimball is a professor of dermatology at Harvard Medical School, with a research focus on psoriasis and hidradenitis suppurativa. She has published more than 375 papers, conducted more than 150 clinical trials and has extensive experience in drug development and innovation. Dr. Kimball’s team submitted a research proposal to access Vivli to conduct analysis relevant to their topic, “Effects of adalimumab on inflammation-associated abnormal hematologic patterns in patients with Hidradenitis Suppurativa”. The team’s completed research has recently been presented to the research community in publications including JAMA Dermatology. She sat down with Vivli to tell us more about accessing individual participant data to advance her research, and the potential for using biomarkers to improve clinical decision and treatment support.

 

Can you tell us a little bit more about your research and what led to your interest in researching this particular topic?

I started my early career studying psoriasis and other chronic inflammatory skin disease. And around probably 2011 or 2012, two things happened. I had a patient who was referred to me just coincidentally, with very severe hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) by a plastic surgeon who wanted help in her care, and at the same time I was asked by a colleague of mine at AbbVie to help design a clinical trial where we could see if we could get a drug approved because no drug had ever been approved. I remember the moment very vividly where I went: oh, my goodness, no one is studying this disease. All the questions I just learned to answer in psoriasis need to be asked. There’ll be different answers, but this is an extraordinary opportunity to find treatments for a really severe disease no one really knows about, but affects, as it turns out, 1% of the population. So, from that moment on, it was all in.

And how would you describe the current state of management of the condition—given that it remains relatively not well known or well studied. And what were you trying to address with the specific question for this research project?

We’ve made enormous progress in HS since I started. We now have three drugs approved—so, really important. But still, I would say, we have a ways to go to get all of our patients to where we would like to see them. The inspiration for these particular papers— actually, three that came through the Vivli research—was that we were looking at some of the more interesting questions that had not really been raised. First we had seen patients who had blood abnormalities like anemia during their disease course, and it improved when they got treated. Being able to look into a big study set that was placebo controlled to demonstrate that, in fact, the anemia and other blood level abnormalities were actually due to inflammation and the disease, not something else, was really important, and important that they improved. We had seen patients, for example, referred for bone marrow biopsies to work them up when, in fact, it was really their underlying disease. So—really helpful in explaining this co-association caused by the inflammation.

The second question we had is that a lot of the studies have very high placebo or high placebo response rates. And what we wanted to see was whether this was because the underlying disease was varying a lot? We were able to use as a surrogate the inflammatory marker CRP to show that some patients in the placebo groups also have improvement in the CRP. That finding suggests that their underlying disease was also improving. So that was just a nice way to biologically confirm that the placebo group was truly improving.

And then the third question was to try to see if CRP could predict who was going to respond and not respond. What we showed is that once you get into higher levels of inflammation, you do reduce your chances of responding. So, while there are good chances of responding in general, people who have the most severe inflammation do have less likelihood of responding. This is important because it helps design of clinical trials and also helps clinicians know what the likelihood of success is going to be, and also may help us eventually pick drugs. 

What do you expect the impact of these findings to be? In management and treatment for patients, and in guiding the course of future research?

Well, hopefully we can spread the word, so patients don’t get unneeded workups for other diseases they don’t have and reinforce that patients with more severe disease absolutely need more aggressive advanced therapy. That can change clinical care in some very important ways as we communicate it to dermatology and our colleagues. In terms of the other two studies—one helps really with clinical trial design, and reaffirms that we need to continue to raise the bar of efficacy with our drugs in order to manage that placebo rate. And then the third one, again, suggests that if you have patients with very high inflammation, you may have to think more aggressively about how you treat them.

Can you tell us a little bit about how you heard about Vivli, and what your experience was like of using the Vivli data repository for this research?

I’m always looking for ways to answer questions I have and getting access to a data set like this is remarkable. For people like me who have questions where we need individual patient level data, and ideally, placebo controlled large trials it’s an amazing resource. It allows us to look at questions that may not be high priorities for sponsors or to go back and answer questions we didn’t think of at the time. So being able to access that information helps us generate papers that will have substantial impact on patient care. It really shows the value of having that information available.

From a technical standpoint it was very easy to work with the group. They followed up with us a lot, so we felt highly cared for while getting through the process of outlining our project. It was all very straightforward and reasonable. And the platform was easy to use, and the teams were really responsive.

Would you say that the direction of your research has been changed or shaped in any way by the results of this research? Has it affected what you’re working on now, for example?

I do have more questions, and I think it has certainly raised awareness for me that there are questions that we will not be able to answer in a single HS clinical trial. Plus being able to aggregate across programs would be immensely valuable for things that are rarer. One of the things I’m trying to do is to encourage more people to open up their data sets like this for us. 

Setting the example really matters and I think these projects help to get the word out about why it is so useful to get this information out for these subsequent analyses. 

Is there anything you would tell other researchers about doing this kind of analysis?

I think it’s just raising awareness that these data sets are out there. Not only did I immediately go look and see what HS ones were there, but I wanted to know what was in psoriasis and what was in atopic dermatitis, and what were in other fields where I might have parallel types of questions. I think that awareness of those possibilities is really helpful as well.

 

Read more about Dr. Kimball’s research:

Effects of adalimumab on inflammation-associated abnormal hematologic patterns in patients with Hidradenitis Suppurativa (Vivli Research Request 7127)

C-Reactive Protein and Response to Adalimumab in Patients With Hidradenitis Suppurativa (JAMA Dermatology)

 

Interested in finding out more about how access to Vivli’s data repository can help advance your research? Find out more about how to search and request data.

Vivli Researcher Spotlight: Investigating the early stroke recurrence rate for people who have experienced minor strokes

Ischemic strokes are caused by temporary disruption of blood flow to the brain, and include transient ischemic attacks (TIAs), commonly known as mini-strokes, as well as minor and major strokes. TIAs and minor strokes do not usually have significant long-term effects in and of themselves, but they are important as warning signs of the potential risk of a more significant stroke.

In carrying out research, TIAs are often considered alongside minor strokes, or as a distinct category. However, there has not been significant research to date focusing on minor stroke as a distinct category, particularly with regard to the potential for recurrence in the short term. Developing a better understanding of minor stroke could help improve patient care as well as advance medical knowledge. In a recently completed study, Dr. Andy Lim and colleagues focused on answering the question of whether isolating data relevant to minor stroke could provide useful information about the potential for recurrence. 

This meta-analysis involved assessing individual patient data from 45,462 participants in 14 included research studies. The findings indicate that the pooled 90‐day stroke recurrence rate for minor stroke as a distinct category is 8.6%. Furthermore, this rate appears to be declining by 0.60% per year—a trend which seems consistent with those associated with improving outcomes associated with contemporary management of minor stroke and TIA assessed together, as well as for TIA outcomes assessed alone. 

Establishing a better understanding of the baseline recurrence rate of minor ischemic stroke can help with comparing new treatments, developing new clinical pathways, and identifying improved methods for managing care. Using the Vivli platform gave the research team access to data from Ticagrelor versus Aspirin in Acute Stroke or Transient Ischemic Attack (SOCRATES) trial data, which Dr. Lim described as “an important piece of our meta-analysis puzzle. Without it, we would not be able to complete the picture.”

Read more about Dr. Lim’s research:

Meta-analysis of early stroke recurrence rate in minor stroke (Vivli Research Request 6866)

Ninety‐Day Stroke Recurrence in Minor Stroke: Systematic Review and Meta‐Analysis of Trials and Observational Studies (Journal of the American Heart Association)

Interested in finding out more about how access to Vivli’s data repository can help advance your research? Find out more about how to search and request data.

Vivli Webinar: Navigating Clinical Trial Data Sharing Under the New Declaration of Helsinki: Practical Steps for Instituting an Ethical and Effective Program

In this webinar, we will discuss the new Declaration of Helsinki and how institutions can take practical steps to institute an ethical and effective data sharing program.

Join us on Thursday, January 23 at 8am PST/11am EST/4pm GMT, for a discussion with Vivli’s CEO Rebecca Li and COO Julie Wood about the top five questions companies or non-profit foundations should ask when they are considering embarking on a data sharing program.

View The Recording

Topics include:

  • Why should we share clinical trial data?
  • When should we begin a data sharing program?
  • How do we start to build a data sharing program?
  • How can we manage a data sharing program?
  • What can a partner like Vivli do for us?

Speakers:

  • Rebecca Li, CEO, Vivli
  • Julie Wood, COO, Vivli

View The Recording

Event: 2024 Vivli Annual Meeting – Innovations in Data Sharing

This event was held at Harvard Faculty Club in Cambridge, MA, on Friday, November 15, for the 2024 Vivli Annual Meeting, co-hosted with the MRCT Center of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard. The meeting focuses on Innovations in Data Sharing and features a keynote address from Steffen Thirstrup, CMO of the EMA. He speaks on the European Health Data Space.

 

RECORDINGS SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES

Session topics focus on the following areas:

  • Keynote address: Steffen Thirstrup, EMA on European Health Data Space
  • Panel discussion on European Health Data Space
  • Health Information Exchanges
  • Risks and Opportunities in AI and data sharing

Agenda


 

Keynote: Steffen Thirstrup, CMO, European Medicines Agency (EMA)

Looking to the future: The opportunities for data sharing and the European Health Data Space

RECORDING


Panel Discussion: The Opportunities for data sharing and the European Health Data Space (EHDS)

Following on from the keynote address, panelists discuss the potential of the EHDS.

Moderator: Rebecca Li, CEO and Co-founder, Vivli

  • David Leventhal, Data Sharing & Disclosure Lead, Pfizer
  • David McAllister, Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and Medical Informatics, University of Glasgow
  • Steffen Thirstrup, CMO, EMA
  • Aneta Tyszkiewicz, Director, Digital & Data, EFPIA

RECORDING


Panel Discussion: Use of Health Information Exchange (HIE) data for research: legal and ethical challenges

The panel discusses challenges related to the use of HIEs and other U.S. data sharing frameworks for research purposes, including research recruitment, retrospective studies, and more.

Moderator: Barbara Bierer, Faculty Director, MRCT and Vivli co-founder

  • Jill De Graff, VP of Regulatory, b.well Connected Health
  • Irene Koch, Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer, Hospital for Special Surgery, New York City
  • David Peloquin, Partner, Ropes & Gray

RECORDING


Panel Discussion: Risks and Opportunities in AI and data sharing

Panelists discuss AI’s risks and opportunities for sharing and re-using data today and in the coming years.

Moderator: Ida Sim, Professor of Medicine and Computational Precision Health, University of California San Francisco; Vivli co-founder

  • Karla Childers, Head, Bioethics-based Science & Technology Policy, Johson & Johnson
  • Dawei Lin, Associate Director for Bioinformatics & Senior Advisor to the Director at DAIT, NIAID, NIH
  • Subha Madhavan, Vice President & Head of AI/ML, Quantitative & Digital Sciences, Research and Development, Pfizer and Vivli Board member
  • David Peloquin, Partner, Ropes & Gray

RECORDING


 

Vivli Member Spotlight: Duke University Medical School

Duke University is a global leader in developing and sharing innovative clinical research that improves patient care and outcomes. Duke University School of Medicine has been partnering with Vivli since 2018 to foster the principles of open science and data access from clinical studies. In a newly published case study, researchers discuss the value of Vivli’s generalist data repository to share, manage, and re-use valuable clinical data: 

Interested in finding out more about how you or your institution can use Vivli’s generalist repository to share, manage, and re-use data more efficiently? Get answers to your questions on our FAQ page or contact Vivli User Support directly at support@vivli.org.

Vivli Researcher Spotlight: Using clinical trial data to assess the impact of empagliflozin on non-cardiovascular hospitalizations in patients with heart failure

Lower respiratory tract infections (LRTI) are a frequent complication for elderly patients with heart failure. Non-cardiovascular hospitalizations, including respiratory infections, cause around 50% of the hospitalizations in heart failure patients, making them comparable to cardiovascular hospitalizations in terms of health and resource use impact. However, little is known about the causes and associated prognosis of non-cardiovascular hospitalizations in patients with heart failure.

Empagliflozin is a sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 (SGLT2) inhibitor, a class of medicines primarily used to lower blood sugar in adults with type 2 diabetes. In a recently completed study, Dr. João Pedro Ferreira and colleagues aimed to study the potential impact of empagliflozin on LRTI. The research team’s goal was to determine whether empagliflozin could reduce LRTI, due to its capacity to reduce oxidative stress and improve host defense mechanisms.

The research findings indicate that LRTI was frequent in the cohort of enrolled participants, and associated with a poor prognosis. The total number of LRTI events was reduced in the empagliflozin group, compared to placebo.

Using the Vivli platform enabled the research team to include previously unpublished data which were unavailable anywhere else. This research is another addition to the list of benefits of these SGLT2 inhibitor agents; Dr. Ferreira noted that, since heart failure exacerbations and respiratory infections often go “hand-in-hand”, showing that empagliflozin can reduce the incidence of these is good news for patients.

Next Steps

Read more
Non cardiovascular hospitalizations in heart failure and preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) and the effect of empagliflozin (Vivli Data Request 8933)

Empagliflozin and risk of lower respiratory tract infection in heart failure with mildly reduced and preserved ejection fraction: An EMPEROR-Preserved analysis (European Journal of Heart Failure)

Find out more about requesting data from Vivli

Vivli version 3.4 of the platform has been released

Version 3.4 of the Vivli platform has been released and is available to users. The key change with the new version of the platform is users can now submit an enquiry directly on the platform about studies that are not listed in the Vivli search. This change is aimed at supporting researchers and Vivli members so that it is a more seamless process.

“Our members have asked to move the enquiries process to the platform and so we have made this change,” said Julie Wood, Vivli COO. “We think this will allow easier tracking of enquiries. It makes it easier for our members to interact with users and if that study is eligible to be shared, it makes it much easier for a researcher to include it in a data request.”

Other usability features have been added and Vivli how to guides have been updated.

Vivli CEO Rebecca Li to participate in panel discussion for Harnessing the Potential of Patient-Level data in Clinical Trials     

Vivli’s CEO, Rebecca Li, will speak on Day 3 at the Global Clinical Trials: Technology & Innovation webcase series. This online event will take place on May 14-16, 2024. Li will participate as a panelist in a discussion session on ‘Harnessing the Potential of Patient-Level data in Clinical Trials.’

Explore the practical benefits of patient-level datasets in clinical trial as industry experts discuss strategies for implementing fully consented patient data and its impact on trial outcomes. The panel will be held on Thursday, May 16th, 5pm CEST / 4pm BST / 11am EDT. Learn more and register here.