The Genomic Data Infrastructure project launches
The European Genomic Data Infrastructure (GDI) project launched in Brussels on Thursday 17 November. The new €40 million project, coordinated by ELIXIR, is jointly funded by the European Commission under the Digital Europe Programme, and through co-funding from participating Member States.
The aim of the GDI project is to realise the 1+MG initiative’s ambition of creating a data infrastructure that will enable secure access to genomics and corresponding clinical data across Europe.
The project involves a consortium of partners from 20 European countries. It will facilitate a cross-border federated network of national genome collections for biomedical research and personalised medicine.
Benefits of the project
The GDI project aims to unlock a data network of over one million genome sequences for research and clinical reference. This will create unprecedented opportunities for transnational and multi-stakeholder actions in personalised medicine for common, rare and infectious diseases.
Authorised data users, such as clinicians, researchers and innovators, will be able to advance understanding of genomics for more precise and faster clinical decision-making, diagnostics, treatments and predictive medicine. Access to the data will also lead to improved public health measures that will benefit European citizens, healthcare systems and the overall economy.
Serena Scollen, the GDI Project Coordinator and Head of ELIXIR Human Genomics and Translational Data team, spoke of the importance of having an infrastructure for genomic data:
"Genomes will soon be generated more routinely as part of healthcare. To realise the full promise of genomics and its implementation into healthcare, it is critical to facilitate research and innovation and integrate findings into the clinic and healthcare.
"One of the biggest challenges we face is the lack of infrastructure - needed to support the discovery, access, sharing and analysis of human genomics data on a massive scale. By working together, countries will be able to deploy infrastructure to facilitate secure cross-border data access."
GDI is an exciting project that will deploy sustainable and secure cross-border linkage of and access to a multitude of genomic and related phenotypic, clinical and other datasets across Europe. Coordinated by ELIXIR, the project will be the driving force to create a data space for genomics data to implement the 1+MG initiative and benefit European citizens.
Posted: 17 November 2022