EU Commission’s COVID-19 Data Platform: Facilitating data sharing and analysis to accelerate research to “flatten the curve”
Summary
EU Commission’s COVID-19 Data Portal facilitates data sharing and analysis to accelerate coronavirus research. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, an unprecedented number of scientific efforts are taking place worldwide to help combat the new coronavirus. One of the biggest challenges in this fast-moving situation is to share data and findings in a coordinated way to understand the disease and to develop treatments and vaccines. The COVID-19 Data Portal addresses this challenge by bringing together relevant datasets that are contributed by research teams and organisations worldwide. The primary entry point of the initiative is the COVID-19 Data Portal, hosted in collaboration with partner such as ELIXIR Europe, EMBL and EOSC-Life.
Results
One month after the launch of the COVID-19 Data Platform, a vast amount of data has rapidly been collected and shared within the European and global research community. It contains over 30.000 entries, bringing together data from individual research projects and public data sets that include a range of data such as on genes, protein structures, and electron microscopy data. These data have informed multiple research projects, giving insights on, for instance, human interaction, risk factors, and suggestions for drug repurposing possibilities.
(Image: © EU Commission)