Stories of Success from the BY-COVID project
10 September 2024
The BY-COVID project was launched in autumn 2021, as part of the European Commission’s HERA incubator plan ‘Anticipating together the threat of COVID-19 variants’. The aim was to consolidate solutions, often rapidly assembled during the COVID-19 pandemic, to support the continuing response to COVID-19 and preparedness for future infectious disease outbreaks.
Three years later, we present a selection of the project’s many success stories, framed by the concept of a FAIR data journey. Sixteen success stories are highlighted in 5 sections of the brochure:
Mobilising data
- Data Hubs: making infectious disease genomic data available to all Recognising data stewardship
Connecting, standardising and exposing data
- FAIRsharing: enhancing the discoverability of infectious disease data sources and their standards
- The European COVID-19 Data Platform and the Pathogens Portal: integrated data platforms to facilitate coronavirus data sharing and analysis
- A provenance framework for trustworthy and reproducible infectious disease research
- Linking data and expertise across the social science, clinical research and biodata domains
- Handling sensitive data workflows
Analysing data
- A framework for federated causal research questions reusing sensitive health data
- Promoting standardisation in wastewater analysis for early detection of epidemic hotspots
- Secondary use of COVID-19 vaccine trial data and biosamples to understand new variants
- Using molecular data to understand disease mechanisms
- An automated SARS-CoV-2 genome surveillance system built around existing components
Training and sharing expertise
- The Infectious Diseases Toolkit: an online resource to share expertise in infectious disease data management
- Enhancing expertise in infectious disease data infrastructure creation and management
Engagement and outreach
- Boosting awareness of research data infrastructure amongst citizens
- Influencing European and international policy in infectious disease management
BY-COVID brought together a consortium of 53 partners from 20 European countries covering clinical, public health, social and biomolecular sciences. Sincere thanks is extended to all members of the consortium for their sustained efforts. Not all outputs could be featured in the brochure, more examples can be found on the project website and in project publications.
We hope organisations outside the consortium will make use of, contribute to, and sustain this data ecosystem, in line with BY-COVID’s ambition to create a data backbone for future re-use.