DELSA Global and collective innovation

Guest columnist: Eugene Kolker, Co-founder and President, DELSA Global
Chief Data Officer, Seattle Children’s Hospital

Greater Seattle is known for its prowess in the life sciences and computer science. An emerging strength is the “collective innovation” occurring between these areas.

Responding to the dynamic growth in this area, the newly formed Seattle-based Data-Enabled Life Science Alliance International (DELSA Global) is aimed at supporting these collaborations through a variety of measures.

International in scope
On May 3rd and 4th, The Data-Enabled Life Sciences Alliance International (DELSA Global) community convened in Washington, D.C. for the DELSA Workshop II “Supporting Ecosystem for the Life Sciences in the Beginning of the 21st Century”. A global perspective was achieved with over 80 participants from 9 countries (Belgium, Canada, Germany, India, Israel, People’s Republic of China, Russian Federation, United Kingdom, and United States of America).

During the workshop three key topics were examined: (1) new transformative ways of conducting data-intensive discovery in life sciences; (2) accelerators, successful projects, and criteria to evaluate them; and (3) DELSA Global as a world-wide community development. During the sessions, it was clear that data-enabled life science challenges are universal and that solutions will be drawn from all parts of the world. The participants were shown details of projects in India, aspects of Russian data analysis, and information about data challenges in Germany, to name just a few of the valuable exchanges that took place during the workshop.

Major outcomes
A major outcome of this workshop was the identification of projects of high potential in accord with DELSA’s mission – “to advance the impact of data-enabled life sciences research on the pressing needs of our global society.” Eight were subsequently selected by the Executive Committee as DELSA Endorsed Projects (click here for further information on specific projects):

Project 1: Social Networking Platform for Tool Brokering/Community Building
Project 2: Data Set Accessibility Project
Project 3: Training Data Scientists
Project 4: Global Protein Atlas
Project 5: Internet2 Application
Project 6: DELSA Matchmaking Website
Project 7: Pregnancy Atlas Use Case
Project 8: ParaMEDIC Use Case

Global opportunity
Each of these eight opportunities are open to further development and enhancement by funders, companies, universities, organizations, teams, and individuals. Comments and suggestions regarding the projects and DELSA’s role in their advancement are welcome. DELSA is neither a funding agency nor a consortium, but an alliance of individuals and organizations from around the world with a common commitment to the future of data-enabled life sciences. With community participation and engagement, these projects can move forward and deliver key benefits to science and society.

DELSA is prepared to support, promote and facilitate the structure and management of these projects, and all members of the community are invited to indicate interest in participation or support for one or more of these eight projects.

For further details or to indicate interest, please contact: [email protected], [email protected] or [email protected].