Online, 5/12/2023.
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 third workshop: Reflection on future collaboration and support actions, that took place on December 5th, has attended Maria Machado, as iToBoS Project Manager (University of Girona). In total 88 participants from the selected projects and infrastructures have participated in the event.
In the workshop, the EC services have given the welcome to the participants and have introduced the agenda.
Next, the plenary session took place with presentations on established synergies among projects.
Later, three parallel breakout sessions were organized:
- Access to data (technical and leal considerations).
- Data interoperability.
- Sustainability of cancer data resources.
The representative of iToBoS project participated on the third session.
The participants in each session discussed about the following questions proposed by the EC:
- Are there any low-hanging fruits for synergies between projects that you have established? Have you acted on them in concrete terms and/or how do you plan you to act on them?
- How can we work towards consolidating the cancer data ecosystem in Europe?
- What are the needs and priority areas that are not covered by the proposed EHDS regulatory framework, where EC support would be needed in relation to “access to data”, “data interoperability” or “sustainability of cancer data resources”?
Once finished the parallel session, the participants have joined again in the plenary session where the results obtained in each session were presented and discussed.
Finally, the EC services closed the workshop exposing the conclusions obtained in the three workshop.