EOSC-Life is making a lasting impact by connecting data, tools, clouds, and people across geographic boundaries, thus creating an open collaborative digital space for digital biology. This space represents a step change in data-driven life science for Europe.
Through the European Open Science Cloud, scientists in both industry and academia will be able to access data hosted on advanced technology platforms by using the provided tools and expertise, which allow data integration across disciplines and geographical barriers. Good ideas and excellent science will no longer be limited by the individual scientist’s local access to leading facilities.
At the level of individual Member States, EOSC-Life represents substantial added value. By developing pan-European standards, services, and training programmes, EOSC-Life supports the integration of national capabilities and increases confidence in the synergy and sustainability of investments.
These endeavours have been supported throughout the project by the broad geographic involvement of national expert centres (i.e. research infrastructure nodes) in EOSC-Life. Access to advanced life science infrastructures is a key objective of the Smart Specialisation Strategies being applied in many European regions. These efforts have received and will continue to receive direct support from the implementation of Europe-wide standards through EOSC-Life and – through our established partnerships – will be linked to ongoing global efforts (e.g. MIAPPE, NIH Data Commons, GA4GH, RDA).
The project is removing legal and administrative barriers that hinder human research data sharing across geographical and organisational boundaries while preserving the trust of research participants. This paves the way for continent-scale cohorts in life science research. As sensitive data sharing and joint analysis efforts have been severely limited due to various restrictions associated with different classes of sensitive data, this represents a significant innovation. EOSC-Life has helped place Biomedical and Medical Research Infrastructures (BMS RIs) in a position to provide guidance that lowers barriers that block biomedical and health research projects in a GDPR-regulated environment.
While this project does not overcome all the challenges associated with cross-border human data sharing, its establishment of a common framework for sharing translational research, biobanking, and clinical trial data represents a critical step towards the creation of truly pan-European cohorts – enabling Europe to take a leading role in personalised medicine.
The collection of data resources benchmarks our ambition for EOSC-Life, but this is being followed up by tracing the research impact and industrial use of these data. By shaping EOSC to meet the needs of the life science community, we are providing a unique opportunity for scientists to access and integrate an unprecedented richness of data resources. The use of common metadata specifications, cataloguing, and indexing in data catalogues will make BMS RI datasets widely accessible across disciplines. Just as the discipline of bioinformatics emerged as a result of increased access to biological sequence and structure data, we wish to foster new data-science disciplines based on access to biomolecular data, biological images, and rich phenotypic assays. The open calls provided throughout the project have attracted leading European scientists, and the rigorous peer-review of these applications drives the establishment of internationally competitive projects.