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

Tool or framework Policy tool

Data Security Work Stream

Study Group

Cohort Representation

Aims to create a standard or set of guidelines to computationally describe a cohort and query it across a network

Genomic/phenotypic/clinical data representation

Technical specification Data model or ontology

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