The European Genome-Phenome Archive (EGA) organise the Workshop "Tools and techniques to make sensitive data discoverable (Use-cases, hands-on session of Beacon implementation)" in the framework of the 21st European Conference on Computational Biology, which will take place in Sitges from the 12th to the 21st of September.

One of the main bottlenecks in human genomics research is the lack of secure and federated discovery of identifiable genomics data that requires tight privacy controls. This problem needs even more attention with the expansion of genomics data in clinical application, such as for medical diagnostic or prognostic purposes in rare diseases or cancer.

This workshop aims to provide knowledge and hands-on sessions about the discoverability of sensitive genomics and clinical data without jeopardizing the privacy or ownership of such datasets. European Genome-phenome Archive along with ELIXIR and the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH) has been involved to develop tools and techniques to tackle this challenge. Beacon recently became an approved GA4GH standard for data sharing. Now, anyone handling sensitive human dataset can choose to ‘Beaconize’ their dataset and add it to Beacon network to make their data discoverable.

The workshop has three objectives with following sessions for the participants:

• Session I – Sensitive data challenges. What makes data, a sensitive data? Introduction to long-term secure archiving of all types of potentially identifiable genetic, phenotypic, and clinical data. Re-usuablity of datasets, FAIR data principles, public trust and policies on data governance.

• Session II – Beacon use case: Secure sharing of clinical genomics data by connecting different hospitals of Catalunya. Bottlenecks of sensitive data sharing and data re-usability challenges, how does it impact in real-life scenarios? Patient’s journey, stories, use-cases and Introduction to Beacon pilot project launched to connect hospitals of Catalunya.

• Session III – Demo Beacon Implementation (BYOD: Bring your own dataset). Participants will learn how to make their sensitive data discoverable without jeopardising the privacy of such dataset through demo/hands-on training on Beacon tool reference implementation (Documentation: http://docs.genomebeacons.org/).