EOSC-Life Data mobilisation summary

The overall objective of Work Package 13 is to deliver essential open data infrastructure to support urgent scientific research in the face of  the COVID-19 pandemic. Including both the extension of existing infrastructure through software development and the operationalisation of this extended infrastructure through deep support services, the aim is to enable and empower a substantial research effort across European and global research communities. More specifically the objectives of WP13 are to:

1) Mobilise open biomolecular data relevant to COVID-19 research from structured bioinformatics databases and prioritised life science RI resources via the COVID-19 Data Portal
2) Mobilise new SARS-CoV-2 biomolecular data emerging from research laboratories, national public health organisations, EU and global initiatives through the SARS-CoV-2 Data Hubs to the COVID-19 Data Portal
3) Connect biomolecular data to sensitive contextual clinical and epidemiological data that lie within dispersed controlled access repositories, presenting these through the COVID-19 Data Portal

Progress on objectives: 1 and 2 progressed well as reported in D13.1 report. Objective 3 is still underway as we move forward, as data protection-related issues have presented several challenges.

• Objective 1: Over 7.5 million records from across EMBL-EBI resources are displayed on the Portal (January 2022), with many options for search and retrieval.
• Objective 2: Also displayed on the portal are consensus sequence data from 101 countries, and raw sequencing read data coming in from 79 countries. All public raw sequencing read data are analysed with custom workflows through the data hubs system and the results also presented on the Portal.
• Objective 3: A preliminary cohort browser application (developed under ReCoDID) has been adapted and made available for the purposes of the European COVID-19 Data Platform to allow browsing linked biomolecular and clin-epi data. While the legal framework for harmonisation and linking of sensitive data continues to be developed, with a corresponding lack of data to show, this functionality is held ready for deployment in the COVID-19 Data Portal. Currently the Portal displays, via the Pathogens Portal one cohort study.