Online, 15/11/2023.
The European Commission has organised a series of 3 invitation-only online workshops for consortium members of EU-funded projects and initiatives on data-driven approaches in Cancer Research and data infrastructures relevant to cancer:
- First workshop: Introduction and landscaping of data-driven projects in cancer, October 26th, 2023.
- Second workshop: In-depth discussion on three topics requiring coordination and support, on November 15th, 2023.
- Third Workshop: Reflection on future collaboration and support actions, on December 5th, 2023.
The overall aim of the workshops is for the participating projects to explore synergies among the different actions and contribute to a policy dialogue with the EC services. The workshops specific objectives are the following:
- take stock of available resources (data, tools, methodologies and services) from participating projects and initiatives;
- identify synergies, complementarities, and potential collaboration areas;
- identify common gap areas relating to available data types, harmonised ontologies, federation architecture, governance, secure and controlled access mechanisms etc.;
- decide on common priority areas for enhanced collaboration, and/or ned of additional support;
- tentatively explore how above issues can concretely be acted upon by project consortia, with the support of respective EU services as needed;
- establish a dialogue between projects and with Commission services;
- communicate EU policy priorities and clarify concepts, e.g. concerning the on-going.
The iToBoS project was selected among 38 projects and infrastructures related to data-driven cancer solutions.
In the second workshop: In-depth discussion on three topics requiring coordination and support, that took place on November 15th, have attended Maria Machado, as iToBoS Project Manager (University of Girona) and Balázs Pataki (SZTAKI), as project partner.
In the workshop, the EC services have given the welcome to the participants and have introduced the three topics chosen: 1.Access to data-legal and technical considerations, 2. Data interoperability and 3. Sustainability of cancer research data resources.
Next, the three sessions of project and infrastructures expositions covering the Workshop topics took place.
The Session 1: Access to data – legal and technical considerations had as objective to give answers to the following questions:
- How to enable data access to personal health data for secondary use?
- How to boost re-use of existing data and benefit from successful use cases/pilots beyond the limits of a given project with a limited duration?
In this session, Balász Pataki (SZTAKI) presented iToBoS results in this field together with more five projects and infrastructures.
The Session 2: Data interoperability, had as objective to give answers to the following questions:
- How to foster interoperability of health data among infrastructures and platforms in Europe?
- Which dimensions of interoperability could your project contribute to in view of the EHDS: Legal, Organizational, Semantic or Technical?
In the second session, nine projects and infrastructures experiences were presented.
The Session 3: Sustainability of cancer research data resources, had as objective to give answers to the following questions:
- How to ensure longevity of cancer research data and availability of longitudinal data (necessary curations and updates)?
- How to ensure long term access management for re-use of these cancer data beyond individual projects?
- How to sustain underpinning platforms/analytical tools/infrastructure elements that enable further re-use of these data?
In the last session, four projects and infrastructures experiences were presented.
Finally, the EC services closed the workshop informing about the next steps.