On 20 January, the GDI/B1MGplus Stakeholder Forum brought together representatives from European genomics and health data initiatives to take stock of how the Genomic Data Infrastructure (GDI) is supporting other EU projects, and what is needed to sustain that value after the current programme ends.
Held online and hosted by ELIXIR, the meeting focused on how GDI is aligning methods and services with the Genome of Europe, ERDERA, CANDLE and EUCAIM across population genomics, rare diseases, cancer research and AI-driven imaging.
Across the presentations and the closing panel discussion, the shared emphasis was on practical interoperability: making it easier for projects to connect to services, reduce duplication, and enable responsible reuse of data across borders and disciplines.
This discussion also situated GDI’s work in the wider context of Europe’s emerging Health Data Space, where sustained collaboration between infrastructures is expected to be essential for long-term impact.
A stronger spotlight on ERDERA’s contribution to rare disease research
ERDERA was discussed as a concrete example of how alignment with a European infrastructure can help address persistent barriers in rare disease research. Rare diseases often involve small and geographically dispersed patient populations, which makes data sharing and analysis across sites important for building sufficiently robust evidence.
Morris Swertz, Professor at University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG), set out how ERDERA is developing data sharing and analysis services and how these can be strengthened through interoperability with GDI. He described the value of approaches such as FAIR data catalogues and federated analysis, supported by secure analysis environments and high-performance computing, to enable collaboration while maintaining appropriate safeguards for sensitive data.
In this framing, the GDI–ERDERA collaboration is not an end in itself, but a means to make cross-border research more feasible in practice—helping rare disease researchers move from isolated datasets towards analyses that are better connected, more comparable and more reusable.
Outputs and next steps highlighted by the forum
The forum’s outputs centred on clarifying what GDI is already providing to other projects, how partner initiatives can benefit during the current phase, and what building blocks will be required to sustain and extend these services over time.
Participants also used the discussion to surface stakeholder questions and priorities, supporting a shared view of where alignment can be most actionable in the near term.
