Grant for projects that help researchers harness data and technology
The Thematic Digital Competence Centres (TDCC) are network organisations that help researchers harness digital data and technology. They connect expertise and support innovation. Two projects from Leiden University have been awarded a grant through the Dutch Research Council's TDDC programme.
There are three TDCCs in the Netherlands: Life Science & Health (LSH), Natural and Engineering Sciences (NES) and Social Sciences & Humanities (SSH). The Leiden projects are both within LSH, and, together with another project, share over €840,000 of funding from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). In total, 12 projects have been awarded funding.
Shared standards in biology
Modern biology generates enormous amounts of data. Researchers rely on workflow systems to analyse these data transparently and reproducibly. Yet, systems such as Nextflow, CWL, WDL, Snakemake and Galaxy often do not work well together, causing valuable time and knowledge to be lost as workflows are abandoned or reinvented.
The FAIRworkflow community unites Dutch researchers, clinicians and students to address this challenge. Through shared standards, harmonisation tools, open repositories and training resources, they aim to make data analysis more efficient, sustainable and directly applicable to healthcare, scientific research and society at large.
Project: FAIRworkflow - a Dutch bioinformatics community to support harmonised workflow development, infrastructure and education. Main applicant: Hailiang Mei (LUMC)
Identifying the best solutions for sharing patient-generated health data
Patients are increasingly collecting data themselves and sharing their health experiences. This can contribute to research and insights that are valuable to others. Various patient communities have developed technical solutions on their own platforms to enable them to share this data and these experiences with one another and with researchers.
In this project, the researchers aim to identify the top ten solutions. They will also explore how these solutions can meet key standards for secure data exchange in line with FAIR principles and to improve our knowledge of good data management practices. Finally, they will draw up a follow-up schedule with topics and activities designed to improve access to data generated by patients themselves.
Project: Strengthening the impact of health research by connecting patient-driven infrastructures for citizen-generated data. Main applicant: Wessel Kraaij (Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science)