Study Groups

Study Groups survey the landscape of the genomics and health community, define needs, and determine whether GA4GH can help.

When community members highlight a problem in genomics and health data use, GA4GH can form a Study Group to investigate the need and determine whether to develop a new product. In some cases, Study Groups may recommend updating an existing product or formally recognising work that has already taken place outside of GA4GH.

Study Group participants represent a broad cross-section of the community, including software developers, researchers, bioinformaticians, and clinicians. If a new product seems appropriate, many Study Group participants go on to lead the team that develops it.

Typical Study Group activities include:

Defining a problem statement
Performing landscape analysis
Developing use cases
Engaging with stakeholders

Current Study Groups:

Bad Actors in Research Environments (BARE)

Aims to provide guidance for detecting intentional misuse of life science data in controlled environments

Security/regulation/ethics

Technical specification Technical implementation guidance

Data Security Work Stream

Study Group

Federated Cohort Building

Aims to explore methods for researchers to search across cohorts

Data discovery

Technical specification Protocol

Clinical & Phenotypic Data Capture (Clin/Pheno) Work Stream, Discovery Work Stream

Study Group

Pharmacogenomics Data Standardisation

Aims to develop a pharmacogenomics data standard to address translational gaps across disparate health systems and enable equitable clinical decision support