DTL-Data Projects was awarded funding from Topsector Life Sciences & Health to address scientific and technical hurdles on the path towards optimal use of scientific data for personalised health, disease prevention and care.
Scientific data are typically scattered, hard to locate, with often unclear accessibility conditions. They are frequently not interoperable and can thus not be utilised by researchers outside the project originally generating the data. Therefore, creating FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data is a major step to achieve true data driven science and innovation. The recent plans of the European Commission to make all data derived from EU-funded research projects FAIR underline this.
The two-year project FAIR-dICT addresses the scientific and technical challenges, focused on the Top Sector Health, but in close collaboration with top team ICT. The project sets out to:
- fundamentally change the health and disease paradigm in the Netherlands,
- demonstrate a leading role for Dutch industry and for the Netherlands as a guiding member state in the European Open Science Cloud,
- develop a comprehensive training programme for the data experts of the future.
The funds will be used to develop a first prototype of an interoperable Data FAIRport, a FAIR data tool that allows (meta)data to be searched and accessed. The Data FAIRport will transform non-FAIR data into FAIR format as well. In addition, the project will contribute to the building of a prototype of the Personal Health Train, together with partners in f.i. the Prana Data project, the STW perspectief programme, and BBMRI-NL.
FAIR-dICT will demonstrate the added value of data interoperability, and thus create awareness for the virtues of FAIR data. This will result in the growth of a consortium of partners that actively collaborate in implementing FAIR data publishing and e-health related technology. Several partners and projects have already joined the consortium by signing a non-legally binding Letter of Intent to Collaborate. The building of a consortium will contribute to effective dissemination of the innovations originating from the project, and prepare for a sustainable application of the scientific and technical results.
Within England IHE-UK is working with NHS Digital to create a standard set of classification metadata. We have developed a Metadata charter which supports the very heart of your FAIR initiative which we would like to share with you.