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BBMRI.nl: ‘The art of sharing’
More than a decade of BBMRI.nl has laid a crucial foundation for a national infrastructure for scientific health research in the Netherlands. Several key players reflect on their role and the future of the assets that have emerged from the project.
‘There’s an incredible amount of output, but if you don’t sustain this, you’ll never build that up again,’ Dorret Boomsma and Eline Slagboom agree. They have been closely involved in the research side of BBMRI.nl from the very start. In their interview in the one-off BBMRI.nl digital magazine they reflect on the many things that have come from BBMRI.nl, including the Dutch data Prize in 2018.
Pathologist Folkert van Kemenade is the Dutch representative of BBMRI-ERIC, the overarching European research infrastructure for biobanking. He states that The Netherlands have played a pivotal role in the initial stages of ERIC, and that we should do our best to remain an ERIC member now that many BBMRI.nl assets are transferred to Health-RI. ‘This is an excellent initiative and really the way to go. If you bring research infrastructures together, you avoid duplication and you can operate more easily as one party.’
Susanne Rebers is project manager of the ELSI Service Desk, which continues to be of great value, now under the flag of Health-RI. The ELSI Service Desk provides answers to the many ethical, legal, and societal issues (ELSI) surrounding scientific and healthcare data and bodily material. ‘Each month, the ELSI Service Desk is viewed about 2,000 times’, Rebers says. ‘It clearly meets a need.’
Finally, Gerrit Meijer, scientific leader of BBMRI.nl and currently Chief Scientific Officer at Health-RI, reflects on the future of BBMRI.nl. ‘Establishing productive collaborations is key when it comes to building research and healthcare infrastructures. For more than a decade, BBMRI.nl has been highly successful in this complex playing field, laying important foundations for an integrated national, and at the same time internationally interoperable, infrastructure to facilitate excellent scientific research. This will substantially contribute to improving health outcomes of Dutch citizens.’