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Open data enable innovation

in the bioinformatics industry

Research data is a major asset for life sciences “
industry 2,3,4 . Exploiting these data drives
development within health, agriculture and
biotechnology sectors, thereby leading to economic
and societal benefits. For example, to accelerate
‘The more freely available data that is
drug development, produce efficient washing
compatible with other data, the better for us.
powder, and even design better feed for livestock
Without open data resources, large companies,
and pets.
such as pharmaceuticals, would be hampered
in their work but would not cease to exist. In
Such innovative life sciences projects require the
essential use of open data, open-source software contrast, small and medium-sized enterprises,
and common standards. Together, open resources as well as the startups, would be severely
allow industry, academia and the wider community impacted as in many cases their business models
to create novel services and products. are dependent on the availability of open data
resources.’
For today’s digital life sciences, data standards
and data quality are major bottlenecks for data
Hans Garritzen
accessibility and data sustainability, thereby
Sales Director, Medisapiens
essential enablers of effective data utilisation.
Research infrastructures, such as ELIXIR, ensure
that life science innovators and researchers globally ‘I think Europe, by investing in that framework
can utilise open data. They facilitate access to open [ELIXIR], is doing the right thing to support the
resources such as databases, repositories, software long term sustainability of the Life Sciences
tools, registries, compute and cloud resources, while knowledge economy. Imagine if all the data
promoting standards and enabling collaboration resources that are freely available today would
5
through training and networking events . disappear from tomorrow. It would be tough
for the life sciences companies to sustain their
This report sheds light on the importance of
innovation. They would have to work really,
continued access to open data and related
really hard and spend a large portion of their
resources, along with their underpinning
Research and Development (R&D) spending on
infrastructures that contribute to a thriving life
replacing that common good.’
science ecosystem.
We showcase the growing European bioinformatics Abel Ureta-Vidal
industry and its local environment, and demonstrate
Co-founder & Chief Data Officer at Sofi Health,
the importance of long-term investment in digital Investment director at CMS Ventures
research infrastructures as bedrocks for innovation.

‘Open data is absolutely crucial for us. As soon
as we want to explore new ways of finding
molecules, because this is our business, we first
need to have some proof of concept to make
sure that we are heading in the right direction.
For that, we are actually heavily reliant on open
2 Beagrie, N. & Houghton, J. The Value and Impact of the European data.’
Bioinformatics Institute Full Report. http://www.beagrie.com/EBI-impact-
report.pdfandhttp://www.beagrie.com/EBI-impact-summary.pdf (2016).
3 Jefferson, O. A. et al. Mapping the global influence of published research on
industry and innovation. Nat. Biotechnol. 36, 31–39 (2018).
4 Westbrook, J. D., Soskind, R., Hudson, B. P. & Burley, S. K. Impact of the Florent Villiers
Protein Data Bank on antineoplastic approvals. Drug Discovery Today vol. 25 Lab Leader for Biochemistry & Data Science, Bayer
837–850 (2020).
5 Garcia, P. R. et al. Public data resources as a business model for SMEs. The
Role of Public Bioinformatics Infrastructure in supporting innovation in the
life sciences [version 1; not peer reviewed]. F1000Research vol. 7 https://doi.
org/10.7490/f1000research.1115445.1 (2018) “