FAIR for Pharma

This Community of Experts supports the implementation of the Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable (FAIR) guiding principles in the life sciences by promoting best practices as well as supporting enabling methods and tools across industries.

From its inception in 2019 to today, this community of experts supports the implementation in the life sciences of the 15 guiding principles for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Re-usable (FAIR) data published in [Scientific Data 2016].

A shift to data-centric approach and implementation of the FAIR guiding principles is expected to be a game-changer for the Life Science industry [Drug Discovery Today 2019] especially when coupled with quality measures [Drug Discovery Today 2022]. FAIR data and metadata enables greater value over a longer period of time, including enabling more likely and effective secondary reuse [FAIR4Clin guide]. Finally, the implementation of AI/ML solutions is expected to highly benefit from data sets with FAIR characteristics.

As the life science industry continues to transform digitally, this project helps foster greater collaboration and more effective industry partnerships.

This Community of Experts is made possible by the financial contributions of Sponsor members (Roche, Pfizer, Bayer, Ontoforce and Xponentl Data), which constitute the Steering group, ensuring governance, strategic support and providing guidance to the working groups.

The community comprises world-class of experts affiliated with over 20 different Pistoia Alliance members. They are practitioners implementing the FAIR principles in pharmaceutical companies and other life-science organizations. They co-create through regular online meetings, workshops, and live events e.g. during Pistoia Alliance’s yearly conferences. Active participants in working groups develop closer ties with world-leading experts across industries. They co-create valuable pre-competitive resources.

Notable resources created and maintained by the community include:

The FAIR Toolkit, a curated collection of FAIR use cases and methods
The FAIR Maturity Matrix, an organizational maturity model to guide the implementation of FAIR in life science organisations
FAIR4Clin Implementation Guide: an overview of the state of FAIR in the clinical space

The working groups currently active include:

FAIR Business Value:
Identify value creation use-cases, frameworks to assess the qualitative and quantitative value of FAIR data.
FAIR Best-Practices:
Identify and disseminate best practices, providing thought leadership (guidelines, frameworks, publications, webinars)

Currently active member organisations include (in alphabetical order):

Amgen, Astrazeneca, Bayer, Biorelate, CCC, CSL Behring, Curlew Research, Elixir-Rurope, EPAM, FAQIR Foundation, GO FAIR Foundation, GSK, Iqvia, Manchester University, Ontoforce, Orcid, Perdl, Pfizer, Recursion Pharma, Roche, Scibite, Syngenta, The Hyve, Thermofisher, Xponentl Data