The ability to combine datasets from multiple projects and institutions all over the world can greatly accelerate scientific research. In the healthcare and biomedical research ecosystems, however, data generators store their data in a myriad of formats, structures, and locations. These technical differences have made it challenging for researchers to search, aggregate, and analyse data from multiple sources. Correspondingly, it is expensive for data providers to restructure existing data to fit the requirements of highly-structured, highly-opinionated sharing systems.

As a result, the data goes unshared and undiscovered. Developed by the GA4GH Discovery Work Stream, the Data Connect API aims to address this problem by providing a simple, flexible mechanism to connect researchers to information about otherwise disparate datasets, regardless of how the data was originally stored or formatted.

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Benefits

• Works with any data that can be serialised as an array of JSON objects
• Supports federation
• Can be implemented across a large variety of data stores

Target users

Researchers, data custodians, and developers