Collaboration brings better human data sharing
Members of the Human Genomes Platform Project (HGPP) recently had the opportunity to visit Sydney to work together in person. Their shared ambition is to enhance capability for securely and responsibly sharing human genome research data nationally and internationally.
The group of 25 members of this BioCommons project were hosted by the Garvan Institute of Medical Research for two days of intensive presentations and discussions. Prof Daniel McArthur also generously presented a thought-provoking keynote to the group.
The team is a distributed collaboration with partners spanning multiple states and institutes who have, by necessity, worked together online for the first year and a half. While the group has demonstrated that a lot can be achieved in an online mode, the HGPP team was pleased to come together in person to have some much needed social interaction, recognise the achievements made in the first half of the project, and workshop plans for project implementation in the coming year.
Being in the same room enabled the partners to all get on the same page about what had been achieved so far in the project, as well as confirming what they wanted to achieve by the end of the year. It allowed lots of cross-talk between the sub-projects and helped identify important integration points that are needed to progress to make the project as a whole a success. The social aspect will no doubt also improve engagement and motivation to achieve project deliverables until the next time they meet before the project wraps up at the end of 2023.
The collaborative relationships established within the HGPP provides the foundations for continued cooperative progress toward improved Human Genomics Data sharing infrastructure for researchers across Australia.