Seven projects designated as GA4GH new driver projects for 2019
The Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH) has named seven of the world's leading genomic data initiatives as new Driver Projects for 2019. They were specifically chosen for their global representation, scientific merit, and capacity to contribute to GA4GH development efforts. According to the alliance:
- European Joint Programme on Rare Disease‘s (EJP RD) mission is to produce a sustainable ecosystem of tools, projects, and programmes across Europe and beyond in order to enable a virtuous circle between rare disease care, research, and medical innovation.
- GEnome Medical alliance Japan (GEM Japan) is a project from the Japan Agency for Medical Research Development (AMED) which aspires to facilitate sharing of genomic and phenotypic information from completed and ongoing Japanese research efforts with the domestic and global communities.
- The Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa) initiative aims to facilitate a contemporary research approach to the study of genomics and environmental determinants of common diseases with the goal of improving the health of African populations.
- Swiss Personalized Health Network (SPHN) is developing a nationally coordinated infrastructure which will enable a federated network for sharing genomic and other health related data for research across Switzerland.
- EUCANCan is a federated network of aligned and interoperable infrastructures in Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, France, and Spain for the efficient analysis, management, and sharing of cancer genomic data.
- EpiShare is an innovative open science project that, in collaboration with the International Human Epigenome Consortium (IHEC) and the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE), will enhance the accessibility of epigenomic datasets. EpiShare will offer methods and tools to better discover, navigate and analyze available epigenomic datasets that will enrich GA4GH standards.
These projects should bring notable advances in terms of health and genomic data management and hence be particularly beneficial for the rare disease community.