National stakeholders meeting 2019 for ELIXIR-LU
October 15, 2019

In September 2019, The ELIXIR-LU team organised its Annual National Stakeholder Forum to give updates on the ELIXIR infrastructure on the European as well as the national level and discuss strategic future developments. More than twenty participants attended the meeting, representing over 15 institutions in Luxembourg ranging from ministries and biomedical research institutes to hospitals and patient associations.

ELIXIR-LU has acquired several new EU projects such as FAIRplus, CONVERGE and Smart4Health. These projects are focused on best practice data management and range from making data FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) to sustainable data management services and reach out to combining healthcare data and mobile devices.

Special focus in the update was given to training and data protection aspects. ELIXIR-LU has together with other national research stakeholders pursued a joint policy making and interpretation around the GDPR. In addition, ELIXIR-LU engaged in tool development for GDPR compliant data management. The open source software DAISY, a data information system for GDPR accountability in research, is already being tested by other research centres in Luxembourg and beyond. In addition, a Data Agreement Wizard (DAWID) that will support tailormade data sharing contract drafts is about to be released.

A large part of the meeting was dedicated to strategic considerations of the future development of ELIXIR-LU as a national platform. There is great interest in activites around reproducible research measures, joint IT solutions, support of more healthcare-related challenges and an improved interoperability of data from different disciplines to allow better integration for research. As a conclusion, ELIXIR-LU will follow up with the various stakeholders on how to best move forward together to further extend and improve the Node’s services on the national level.

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