Health-RI exchange offers insights into shaping a national BioCommons
In October 2024, ELIXIR-UK and its conceived initiative – BioFAIR – engaged in a knowledge exchange with the Netherlands’ Health-RI (ELIXIR-NL) to refine governance and operational strategies for national research data infrastructures.
The meeting brought together Gerry Reilly, Interim Director of BioFAIR, with Mijke Jetten, FAIR Data Lead, and Janet Vos, Coordinator of European Research Infrastructures at Health-RI/ELIXIR-NL, alongside Munazah Andrabi, Community and Data Manager at the University of Manchester (ELIXIR-UK), to discuss lessons learned and explore collaborative opportunities.
Health-RI, the Netherlands’ established data infrastructure for health and life sciences, provides a comprehensive “National Data Portal” with a suite of services that support data-driven research across disciplines. As BioFAIR begins to establish a similar infrastructure for UK researchers, Health-RI’s insights on governance and model development proved valuable, highlighting shared challenges and effective strategies.
Key collaboration areas emerged from the discussions, including metadata model development, cataloguing, and best practice sharing. Health-RI’s established workflows in these domains offer BioFAIR a potential foundation for adapting proven methods and tools. The two initiatives also explored joint training opportunities, envisioning shared training materials and resources to support FAIR data compliance across borders.
Through this exchange, BioFAIR gains access to Health-RI’s tested approaches to establishing a national BioCommons, strengthening the UK’s capability to build a robust data infrastructure tailored to the needs of its life science research community.
Notes to editors
About ELIXIR-UK
ELIXIR-UK is part of the European ELIXIR infrastructure, which supports life science research and its translation to medicine, the environment, and society. By integrating national bioinformatics resources, ELIXIR-UK aims to provide a sustainable infrastructure for biological information, ensuring that data is effectively managed, analysed and shared across the scientific community.
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