Case study · Federation
CanPath opens Canada’s largest health study in one Canadian TRE
Lifebit brings CanPath’s 350,000-participant cohort into a Trusted Research Environment that respects each regional partner’s governance. The data never leaves the source.
01 · The challenge
Many provinces, many rule sets
CanPath’s data comes from regional cohorts, each under its own rules. Sending copies to researchers created duplicates and risk, and there was no common analysis environment.
Different regulatory requirements in each province
Copies sent to researchers created duplicates and multiple sources of truth
No user access controls to confirm only approved researchers used the data
02 · What we deployed
A federated TRE for a federated country
Researchers apply through one front door and analyze CanPath’s harmonized national data in a Canadian-hosted Trusted Research Environment, where they can bring their own tools. No new copies are sent out.
One front door
Approved researchers from Canada and abroad reach the harmonized national dataset through one environment.
Access controls without copies
Tiered access shares the right data without creating new copies.
Built for teaching
CanPath trains faculty and students on a synthetic copy of its data, using the same tools.
How it works
From connected data to approved results
CanPath’s harmonized national dataset, drawn from seven regional cohorts, is hosted in a secure Canadian cloud environment.
CanPath’s harmonized national dataset, standard data dictionaries, and shared consent language let researchers ask one question across regions.
Approved researchers apply through one front door and work in the TRE, and can bring their own analysis tools.
Analyses run where the data sits; results leave only after review in Airlock, and no new copies are made.
What’s in the stack
Lifebit products used: Trusted Research Environment · Federation
03 · The results
One environment, Canadian residency, room to grow
In September 2024 Lifebit, CanPath, and AWS announced the CanPath Trusted Research Environment, backed by a $6.2 million Genome Canada grant. In June 2025 the University of Toronto ran a full-day workshop where faculty and students practiced on a synthetic copy of CanPath’s harmonized data, using the Cohort Browser, Airlock, and ready-made R and Python pipelines. In May 2026 Lifebit and CanPath announced a national federated research infrastructure framework hosted in Canada, with regional cohorts onboarding in phases through 2026.
Timeline
About this use case
Federation
Population health studies follow hundreds of thousands of volunteers over time to learn how genes, environment, and lifestyle lead to chronic disease and cancer. In Canada, each province’s cohort sits under its own rules, so copying data to researchers created duplicates and risk. A federated setup gives researchers one way in while each cohort keeps its data and its approvals.
Who uses it here: Approved researchers from institutions across Canada and abroad, plus faculty and students trained on a synthetic copy of the data.
See how federation works
