BIOMAP holds its first Advisory Board Meeting

On 14 December 2020, the BIOMAP Coordinating Team warmly welcomed the four BIOMAP Advisors Francesca Capon (International Psoriasis Council), DirkJan Hijnen (International Eczema Council), Joanne Chalmers (Harmonising Outcome Measures for Eczema – HOME) and Cecilia M. Sjöberg (Swedish Law and Informatics Research Institute) to the first BIOMAP Advisory Board meeting. The Advisory Board aims to counsel the BIOMAP consortium on scientific and ethical issues to facilitate strategic decisions. Moreover, the Board will give targeted feedback on the project’s scientific progress to maximise its benefits.

After a brief introduction to the BIOMAP project, the Advisory Board Members received a summary of the progress made and the project’s challenges so far. In the following discussion, a central talking point was the topic of data upload. The advisors commented positively on how BIOMAP has addressed data privacy issues through the successful sign-off of the MoU and highlighted this as a novel process that has never existed in an IMI project before. We are confident that the MoU can be used as a template for future large-scale research projects or consortia including numerous partners across different European countries.

Other topics were the use of new technologies and ways to ensure cross-workstream communication. The discussion was very lively, and overall BIOMAP received great feedback. The advisors stated that they are looking forward to seeing more publications arise from the project.

The BIOMAP consortium sincerely thanks its advisors for supporting the project with their critical assessment and fruitful ideas.