HealthyCloud FAIRness assessment tool

Within the HealthyCloud project we carried out a landscape analysis of available health-related data infrastructures, in order to capture the European health data collections available for research purposes, evaluate their FAIRness level and determine the feasibility to perform individual level data linkages. Within this work we collected information about the data aspects of the available health data infrastructures and their adherence to the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Re-usable) using a catalogue matrix format survey. 

After examining in depth the availability of web based tools endorsing the FAIR Data Maturity Model, we decided to use the ARDC FAIR Data self-assessment tool published by the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) as a base to assess the FAIRness level of the data infrastructures.

The ARDC FAIR Data self-assessment tool consists of an HTML Web page with functionalities coded in Javascript. We have customised and integrated the existing tool in an Rmarkdown notebook and extended its functionalities. The new HealthyCloud FAIRness self-assessment tool is a 2-in-1 tool allowing the publication of the HealthyCloud FAIRness evaluation survey and the production of a report including pie charts demonstrating the percentage scores for each FAIR principle as well as an overall score of the data infrastructures. 

The HealthyCloud FAIRness self-assessment tool has been made freely accessible on a public BinderHub portal hosted by the community at mybinder.org ( https://ovh.mybinder.org/v2/gh/PderyckeSciensano/HEALTHYCLOUD/main?urlpath=rstudio.) allowing any user to produce the FAIRness evaluation and the general analysis of their data collections. 

The FAIRness evaluation reports produced by the tool can be updated at any time as a csv file, which can be downloaded and will serve to produce a new updated report from the tool.

The HealthyCloud FAIRness self-assessment tool includes quick user instructions on how to proceed with the tool. A Readme file is also accessible on GitHub (https://github.com/PderyckeSciensano/HEALTHYCLOUD/)