In DRIVE’s 5 seasons, data from more than 35 000 patients, approximately 60 variables and 13 influenza vaccines has been collected. DRIVE partners consider that this valuable database could be leveraged and further utilized for various reasons. Notably, a strong interest in Research and Development activities for new generation of influenza vaccines and a contribution to the worldwide efforts to enhance global surveillance network for respiratory viruses and associated diseases and monitor related vaccines performance. This is the reason why DRIVE developed an Open access to research data and secondary use framework, allowing the secondary use of the data generated since the 2018/19 season.
Finally, DRIVE went beyond the proof of concept and demonstrated the added value of joint public-private European platforms and their potential to be applied to other vaccines post-marketing evaluation, notably against COVID-19. As a spin-off, the DRIVE platform could rapidly be repurposed as a COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness platform under pandemic urgency; and COVIDRIVE (
https://covidrive.eu/(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie)) was set up in 9 months. COVIDRIVE consortium is composed of 12 public and private partners and started its first CVE study in September 2021. As of July 2022, more than 3900 patients have been included in the study.
As a proof-of-concept, the DRIVE project concluded on:
- A multi-stakeholders public-private partnership of 16 partners from seven European countries
- a large study platform, including 13 sites covering 21 hospitals and more than 1,000 general practices in seven EU countries and one nationwide population-based cohort, in Finland
- a unique and representative brand-specific vaccine effectiveness platform capturing 67% of the influenza vaccines on the EU market
- A trusted public-private collaborative platform where IVE point estimates were consistent with those published by other initiatives and stakeholders
- A robust Real World Evidence (RWE) platform able to deliver some precise brand-specific IVE for informed decision-making
- an efficient RWE platform able to deliver IVE results two months after the end of the influenza season
- a cost-effective infrastructure spending an average of 800k€-1M€ per season for IVE studies
- a fruitful scientific collaboration having produced five peer-reviewed scientific publications and 21 scientific communications in journals and conferences
- a very active communication working group that has produced more than 80 website posts/press releases, 34 event participation/organisation, 26 newsletters, 6 promotional materials and hundreds of social media posts.
- a transparent and trusted public-private partnership where partners, as well as independent scientific members, experienced valuable scientific interactions, and no conflict of interest for vaccines evaluation
- a framework for data sharing practices and secondary analysis of the DRIVE dataset which already showed its interest
- a viable approach to repurpose a vaccine effectiveness platform under COVID-19 pandemic urgency (COVIDRIVE was set up in 9 months)
