Systematically linking tranSMART, Galaxy and EGA for reusing human translational research data

What is it about?

This article looked into the options available to researchers for reusing data gathered from patients during clinical research, and outlines the several stages that are needed for these data to be accessed and reused.

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Why is it important?

A huge amount of data has been spawned through patient involvement with research and dispersed into different in-house data repositories due to the impressive number of patients involved. Unfortunately, most of the data are underused, either because they are not shared; shared but cannot be easily found; or because it is hard to reuse due to the deficiency of the crucial metadata that describe the experiments and data processing of the time. The choice of analytical tools can also limit the analysis and prevent interpretation of all the available data. Instead of simply relying on newly generated data, reusing data has its own advantages. Economically, reusing data will help us pare down on huge costs, since it is costly to generate these data. Methodologically, reusing the existing data will help us rapidly develop and verify new methods, which can be used to re-analyse the existing data and reveal information that previously went undetected. We must also consider data privacy, and ensure that all data is secure and reused responsibly. Based on this prerequisite, FAIR data principles at least provides a good guideline to make data ‘R’eusable by making them ‘F’indable, ‘A’ccessible and ‘I’nteroperable.

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