Long term perspectives emphasised by Scientific Advisory Board visit
- 24 Nov 2023
- Ulrike Träger
The SAB is extremely impressed with the achievements of the entire GHGA Team. Both the written progress report as well as the in-person interactions at the meeting indicate that since its inception just three years ago GHGA has assembled an extremely competent, engaged and productive team.
With this opening, the SAB report, which summarises the results and recommendations from an in-depth two day visit as part of the GHGA Annual Meeting, attests the consortium a great start. Valuing the effort our team has put into establishing the GHGA data portal is the best feedback, as without the team none of this project would be possible.
The evaluation recognises that GHGA is currently the German infrastructure mandated to make human omics data available in a national and international context. However, the committee of international experts emphasised the need for long term funding and sustainable business models of our undertaking - for the project but also for IT infrastructure, which currently relies on own contributions by the GHGA Data Hubs.
GHGA is well connected within Europe. The SAB suggested deepening these interactions - specifically driving forward interoperability and showcasing our concept for data stewardship.
Beyond European infrastructures, we believe that GHGA should become a member of the National Initiatives Forum part of GA4GH and continue engaging with the GA4GH workstreams, particularly the cloud workstream.
Engaging internationally is a goal we strive towards and we gladly accept the encouragement to integrate even stronger with international initiatives. Recently, Peter Goodhand from GA4GH joined us for a GHGA Lecture and the subsequent round table discussion focused on GHGA’s involvement with GA4GH.
The SAB also suggested extending our outreach efforts to patients and a broader lay public. This is something we are excited to move ahead with next year. We appreciate the offer to get in touch with Genomics England and learn from their long standing and excellent public outreach experience.
The GHGA consortium would like to thank the members of our SAB for their time evaluating and learning about GHGA and for their valuable feedback. We are looking forward to working together on several of the comments to improve GHGA’s services.