Nationale Gezondheidsdata Catalogus FAQs

Thank you for your interest in contributing to the promotion of data use! Please refer to this information for details on how to connect your organization's data to the Catalog: Metadata onboarding on the Nationale Gezondheidsdatacatalogus.

If you have any questions about the onboarding process, please contact the Service Desk. You can also check the Health-RI calendar for upcoming walk-in consultation hours where our technical and metadata experts can provide additional information; please use the registration form for this.

To report errors, please contact Health-RI via servicedesk@health-ri.nl.

Health-RI works every day to onboard new data (sets). Health-RI collaborates with data holders to achieve this.

Before connecting data sets, organizations must develop policies on how and from which systems the data sets should be made findable, because organizations often have a whole landscape of applications in which the data sets are located. This requires time and coordination from both Health-RI and the data holders. In the coming year, more data sets will certainly be made available, findable, and retrievable in the Catalogus.

The data user can search for and find datasets in the National Health Data Catalogue. The National Health Data Catalogue provides an overview of datasets in the field of health and life sciences in the Netherlands. Data users can find cross-domain data here for secondary use, such as research, policy, and innovation. 

The National Health Data Catalogue bases dataset descriptions (metadata) on the standard followed by the EHDS, the HealthDCAT-AP metadata standard. By complying with this standard, datasets falling within the scope of the EHDS can also be made findable in the European Health Data Catalogue. In this way, the National Health Data Catalogue of the Netherlands is included in the EHDS.

• Is a central place to find and request datasets, regardless of organizational ties to research groups or networks. 
• Harmonizes dataset metadata, so that multiple datasets can be found with a single search query within the domains of healthcare and life sciences, and from various data holders throughout the country. 
• Together with the request process, ensures a faster process for determining whether datasets are usable for research and contain sufficient data for the research question. 
• Through the request process, it will be possible in the future to request multiple datasets from different data holders with just one data request. 
• Prepare data holders for the EHDS. 

With the National Health Data Catalogue, the data user can: 

• Search for datasets and view information about the dataset. 
• See who the data holder is and under what conditions data is available. 
• Request data from the National Health Data Catalogue via the request service. You cannot view data using the National Health Data Catalogue; this is only possible in a secure processing environment. 

The National Health Data Catalogue contains only descriptions of datasets, not personal data. 

The National Health Data Catalogue is linked to the Health-RI data request process. Currently, requests for multiple datasets cannot yet be submitted bundled. This is being worked on. In the future, when the data request service supports this process, it will be possible to request multiple datasets bundled.