Including all voices in international data-sharing governance

Background

Governments, funding bodies, institutions, and publishers have developed a number of strategies to encourage researchers to facilitate access to datasets. The rationale behind this approach is that this will bring a number of benefits and enable advances in healthcare and medicine by allowing the maximum returns from the investment in research, as well as reducing waste and promoting transparency. As this approach gains momentum, these data-sharing practices have implications for many kinds of research as they become standard practice across the world.

Main text

The governance frameworks that have been developed to support biomedical research are not well equipped to deal with the complexities of international data sharing. This system is nationally based and is dependent upon expert committees for oversight and compliance, which has often led to piece-meal decision-making. This system tends to perpetuate inequalities by obscuring the contributions and the important role of different data providers along the data stream, whether they be low- or middle-income country researchers, patients, research participants, groups, or communities. As research and data-sharing activities are largely publicly funded, there is a strong moral argument for including the people who provide the data in decision-making and to develop governance systems for their continued participation.

Conclusions

We recommend that governance of science becomes more transparent, representative, and responsive to the voices of many constituencies by conducting public consultations about data-sharing addressing issues of access and use; including all data providers in decision-making about the use and sharing of data along the whole of the data stream; and using digital technologies to encourage accessibility, transparency, and accountability. We anticipate that this approach could enhance the legitimacy of the research process, generate insights that may otherwise be overlooked or ignored, and help to bring valuable perspectives into the decision-making around international data sharing.

Application of a Dynamic Map for Learning, Communicating, Navigating, and Improving Therapeutic Development

Drug discovery and development is commonly schematized as a "pipeline," and, although appreciated by drug developers to be a useful oversimplification, this cartology may perpetuate inaccurate notions of straightforwardness and is of minimal utility for process engineering to improve efficiency. To create a more granular schema, a group of drug developers, researchers, patient advocates, and regulators developed a crowdsourced atlas of the steps involved in translating basic discoveries into health interventions, annotated with the steps that are particularly prone to difficulty or failure. This Drug Discovery, Development, and Deployment Map (4DM), provides a network view of the process, which will be useful for communication and education to those new to the field, orientation and navigation of individual projects, and prioritization of technology development and re-engineering endeavors to improve efficiency and effectiveness. The 4DM is freely available for utilization, modification, and further development by stakeholders across the translational ecosystem.

The study is open: Participants are now recruiting investigators

Two U.S. national initiatives have stated emphatically that people will be, not patients, but partners in clinical research.

Creating a data resource: what will it take to build a medical information commons?

National and international public-private partnerships, consortia, and government initiatives are underway to collect and share genomic, personal, and healthcare data on a massive scale. Ideally, these efforts will contribute to the creation of a medical information commons (MIC), a comprehensive data resource that is widely available for both research and clinical uses. Stakeholder participation is essential in clarifying goals, deepening understanding of areas of complexity, and addressing long-standing policy concerns such as privacy and security and data ownership. This article describes eight core principles proposed by a diverse group of expert stakeholders to guide the formation of a successful, sustainable MIC. These principles promote formation of an ethically sound, inclusive, participant-centric MIC and provide a framework for advancing the policy response to data-sharing opportunities and challenges.

Insights into Pathomechanisms and Treatment Development in Heritable Ectopic Mineralization Disorders: Summary of the PXE International Biennial Research Symposium-2016

Pseudoxanthoma elasticum is a prototype of heritable ectopic mineralization disorders, with phenotypic overlap with generalized arterial calcification of infancy and arterial calcification due to CD73 deficiency. Recent observations have suggested that the reduced inorganic pyrophosphate/phosphate ratio is the cause of soft connective tissue mineralization in these disorders. PXE International, a patient advocacy organization, supports research in part by sponsoring biennial research symposia on these disorders; the latest meeting was held in September 2016 at Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia. This report summarizes the progress in pseudoxanthoma elasticum and other ectopic mineralization disorders, as presented in the symposium, with focus on translational aspects of precision medicine toward improved diagnostics and treatment development for these currently intractable disorders.

PhenX measures for phenotyping rare genetic conditions

Introduction

The PhenX Toolkit, an online resource of well-established measures of phenotypes and exposures, now has 16 new measures recommended for assessing rare genetic conditions.

Materials and Methods

These measures and their protocols were selected by a working group of domain experts with input from the scientific community.

Results

The measures cover life stages from birth through adulthood, and include clinical scales, characterization of rare genetic conditions, bioassays, and questionnaires. Most are broadly applicable to rare genetic conditions, e.g., family history, growth charts, bone age, and body proportions. Some protocols, e.g., sweat chloride test, target specific conditions.

Discussion

The rare genetic condition measures complement the existing measures in the PhenX Toolkit that cover anthropometrics, demographics, mental health, and reproductive history. They are directed at research pertaining to common and complex diseases. PhenX measures are publicly available and are recommended to help standardize assessments across a range of biomedical study designs. To facilitate incorporation of measures into human subjects’ research, the Toolkit offers data collection worksheets, and compatible data dictionaries.

Conclusion

Widespread use of standard, PhenX measures in clinical, translational and epidemiological research will enable more uniform cross-study comparisons and increase statistical power with the potential for enhancing scientific discovery.