# 1. Introduction This handbook is designed to guide **Data Holders** through the onboarding process for sharing or transferring data to the EUCAIM infrastructure. It outlines the roles, responsibilities, legal and technical requirements, and procedural steps to ensure compliance and facilitate smooth integration into the EUCAIM Federation. The **primary objectives** of this Handbook are to: * Help institutions understand the requirements for contributing data to EUCAIM. * Explain the onboarding steps, documentation, tools, and other resources available. * Ensure alignment with EUCAIM’s Data Federation Framework (DFF) and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles. * Align with the methodological and data standards (such as Health DCAT-AP) in the context of the European Health Data Space (EHDS). * Support legal, ethical, and technical compliance during data contribution. It is intended for use by the technical teams of a data holder and anybody involved in the preparation, validation, or transfer of health data and imaging resources to EUCAIM. The EUCAIM Data Federation is a decentralized infrastructure enabling the secure and privacy-preserving sharing of cancer imaging and clinical datasets across Europe. It includes both Reference Nodes and Federated Nodes, allowing Data Holders to either transfer anonymized datasets to EUCAIM’s secure reference nodes or maintain data locally while supporting federated queries and processing. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://eucaim.gitbook.io/handbook/introduction.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.