From selfish silo to collaborative culture – embracing data-enabled cancer research

Abstract

Aedin Culhane and Mark Lawler, Co-Leads of the eHealth Hub for Cancer, reflect on their data-enabled cancer research journeys, how their collaborative team science approach has reaped significant dividends in cancer research and policy and how the hub is inducing a paradigm shift in how health data are deployed on the island of Ireland. An article in The Wall Street Journal (not the normal reading material for scientists) in 2011 highlighted a new approach to performing scientific research that was gaining significant credence at the time. Entitled ‘The New Einsteins Will Be Scientists Who Share’ (with the strapline ‘From cancer to cosmology, researchers could race ahead by working together – online and in the open’), the article presaged an unprecedented change in how scientists interact with each other, ushering in a culture of collaboration and cross-disciplinary research. Nowhere was this change more obvious than in the genomics and data science community, where a bottom-up movement led to the creation of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH), bringing together researchers from around the world to work together to address some of human health’s greatest challenges through the deployment of data and data tools.