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Data Sharing Framework

A performant, secure, and innovative framework that enables biomedical researchers to extract value from routine data.

Introduction

Introduction to the DSF and informations about Use-Cases/Projects.

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Get technical insights and install the DSF | Develop Process Plugins.

About Us

Contact, partners, the team behind the DSF and more... Join our community!

GitHub

Take a look at the open-source reference implementation.

Data Sharing Framework

The Data Sharing Framework (DSF) is a concept for a secure middleware to distribute data sharing processes based on the BPMN 2.0 and FHIR R4 standards. The DSF is used to support biomedical research with routine data, aiming to extract, merge, pseudonymize and provide data stored in multiple distributed organizations. Every participating site runs a FHIR endpoint accessible by other sites and a business process engine in the local secured network. The process engines execute BPMN processes in order to coordinate local and remote steps necessary to enable cross-site data sharing or feasibility analysis. This includes access to local data repositories, use-and-access-committee decision support, consent filtering, and privacy preserving record-linkage and pseudonymization. The aim is to enable secure and syntactically-, semantically- and process-interoperable data exchange across organizational boundaries. The secure communication infrastructure is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research within the Medical Informatics structure as DSF Community.

DSF concept
DSF concept

News

DSF at the Operaton Release Party!
On Friday, November 21st, 2025, Hauke Hund and Maximilian Kurscheidt from the Data Sharing Framework (DSF) team will attend the Operaton Release Party at the itemis headquarters in Dortmund to celebrate the upcoming release of Operaton 1.0. Don’t miss out on this exciting event and attend in person or through the livestream! Read more

DSF 2.0.0 - First Release Candidate (RC1)
We are happy to announce the DSF 2.0.0 Release Candidate (RC1)! This milestone represents a major advancement for the DSF, bringing new features and significant improvements. The RC1 release is now publicly available on the DSF GitHub. We highlight some of the key features, you can find more details in the full article.
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Operaton
The Data Sharing Framework is entering an exciting new phase. With the upcoming DSF 2.0 release, we are transitioning our business process engine from Camunda 7 to Operaton 1.0.0, a modern, open-source BPMN 2.0 engine. This move marks a significant step toward improved scalability and long-term maintainability.
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Feel free to contact us via dsf-gecko@hs-heilbronn.de and we will take care of your request as soon as possible.