EOSC: COVID-19 Data Portal - Scientists collaborate over new COVID-19 data portal

The platform has had 73,000 users and 2.6 million requests since its launch in April.

A new online platform has been set up by the European Open Science Cloud Initiative, where scientists share COVID-19 data and accelerate understanding of the virus to help develop treatments and vaccines.

The new European COVID-19 Data Platform will allow scientists to share SARS-CoV-2 data from clinical trials, research centres, hospitals and national healthcare systems.

WHY IT MATTERS

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During the COVID-19 pandemic, a big challenge for researchers has been the sharing of data and findings in a coordinated way.

Gathering clinical information, the data portal brings together relevant datasets that are difficult to find, such as raw and assembled viral sequences.

Thousands of researchers are already sharing free resources to tackle COVID-19 in the context of the European Open Science Cloud initiative (EOSC).

Set up by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) and the European research infrastructure ELIXIR, the platform is supporting life science laboratories across Europe to share and store their research data.

THE LARGER CONTEXT

Other data-sharing platforms have also been created in response to what the World Health Organisation described as an 'infodemic' during the pandemic.