This project 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.
Why is this important?
This project supports the implementation of the Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Re-usable (FAIR) guiding principles by sharing best practices. Implementation of the FAIR guiding principles is important for the Life Science industry, as described in Drug Discovery Today. FAIR Implementation releases far greater value from data and associated metadata over a much longer period of time, including enabling more likely and effective secondary reuse.
As the life science industry continues to transform digitally, this project will help foster greater collaboration and more effective industry partnerships.
The project participants access a world-class expert community of practitioners and decision-makers implementing the FAIR principles in pharma and the life sciences through regular online meetings, workshops, and live events during Pistoia Alliance member conferences.
Active participants in working groups develop closer ties with world-leading experts across industries, co-creating cross-industry pre-competitive resources while contributing expert time or other in-kind resources. The current working groups are:
- Key tools for FAIR implementation
- Business value of FAIR
- Best-practices
- Thought leadership
The Sponsor members of the Steering group ensure governance and strategic support and provide guidance to the working groups enabling strategic cross-industry alignment.
What will the project achieve?
Major deliverables from this project include:
- A freely accessible, co-created, and maintained FAIR toolkit to help life science companies to implement the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) guiding principles for data management and stewardship (DOI:10.1038/sdata.2016.18). The FAIR Toolkit is articulated in Use cases and Methods (tools, training, change). It is connected to the FAIR cookbook, which was built by the FAIR+ project.
- The FAIR4Clin guide provides a comprehensive overview on FAIR resources in the clinical space. The guide is co-created by project partners first as a closed prototype, which is then published to a public wiki.
- High visibility and impact through presentations at international conferences, FAIR webinars, participation in workshops, and publications.
The project team collected candidate content in a simple wiki and selected the most relevant content to support the implementation of FAIR by scientists in the life science industry. This enabled the specification, design, and development of a FAIR Toolkit website serving as a “one-stop-shop” to start the journey to support the FAIR data management life cycle.
The Pistoia FAIR Toolkit can be accessed at fairtoolkit.pistoiaalliance.org which was developed with reference to the related Pistoia Alliance User Experience for Life Science (UXLS) Toolkit: uxls.org.
Currently, besides sustaining the FAIR Toolkit, the focus of the project team is to finish a guide about FAIR for clinical trials and healthcare data, called FAIR4Clin guide. The guide should be available to the public in mid-2023.
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