In the life sciences, users are faced with a choice of multiple resources to facilitate and promote the use of standards, policies, models, identifiers, databases, tools, services, and ontologies. Some of these resources are well established while others are less mature and, although the scope of each is quite specific, there is potential overlap.
A paper on the UniChem Widesearch - developed as one of the BioMedBridges data integration pilots by Jon Chambers and colleagues - was just published in the Journal of Cheminformatics.
With the completion of a prototype of the shape-matching software, the BioMedBridges use case "From cells to molecules - integrating structural data" has completed a major milestone. In the first instance the prototype will perform volume matching on example datasets.
New data bridge between ELIXIR and BBMRI supports discovery of underlying causes of disease
A one day workshop, organised by ELIXIR, BioMedBridges and RDA, was held on 16 October 2014 in Brussels to kick-start agreement on a common topics vocabulary to classify resources in the life sciences domain, including databases, tools, courses, training materials, meetings, jobs and publications. Service providers and registries currently use different vocabularies to classify resources. From the user point of view, a common topics vocabulary would enhance the ability to find related resources of interest.
The workshop, hosted on 24-25 June by VUMC in Amsterdam, was attended by project partners and invited external experts from CDISC, BioSharing.org and identifiers.org. The aims of the workshop were to explore several aspects of standardisation, primarily:
Organised by the BioMedBridges partners from TMF, technical staff, legal and ethics experts met on 30 June in Berlin to discuss how best to support life science researchers who need to use sensitive data and/or biosamples. Presentations outlined current and proposed EU data regulations, and synergies between existing resources that aid researchers in navigating various local, national, European and international legislation were explored.
The workshop “Clinical Research Informatics Solution Days” will be held on 26-27 May in Duesseldorf, Germany. The workshop is jointly organised by ECRIN and other EU-funded projects including BioMedBridges to bring together experts, users and innovators from the clinical research domain. The workshop will provide an overview of available IT-tools and services for modern clinical studies. The tools and services will also be demonstrated in interactive hands-on sessions.
