Report from the Bring Your Own Data workshop: Researchers had their first chance to upload their cohort data to the HEAP informatics platform at the recent Bring Your Own Data workshop.
Roxana Merino, HEAP Project Coordinator, said, “The main achievement of this workshop was to bring researchers from all five data cohorts together over Zoom with HEAP’s IT specialists. We compared our metadata, and uploaded the cohort data sets into the HEAP platform. Despite the conditions imposed by COVID-19, we had rich and productive discussions.”
This first testing session highlighted the next areas to focus on, in particular, the need to harmonise metadata in the HEAP Information Commons, as well as to define access and security protocols. Following the workshop, discussions are continuing via a HEAP Github account.
Heimo Muller, leader of the HEAP’s “Data interoperability and sharing” Work Package said “I look forward to reaching out to other EU-funded research projects in the European Human Exposome Network, with the aim of harmonising metadata. Great potential lies in the ability to cross-reference project data to provide new insights on the exposome and how it affects human health. Exciting times are ahead!”