EATRIS-CONNECT

Since the establishment of EATRIS as an ERIC in 2014, the infrastructure has developed a growing portfolio of services and collaborative projects serving several user groups including industry (large pharma and SME), academia, research funders and patients. EATRIS has progressed from proposing a strong proof of concept service portfolio, to building and delivering innovative tools for translational research and is now advancing its strategy to further exploit these tools for the extended research and innovation community. EATRIS-CONNECT will accelerate this strategy by focusing specifically on advancing the digital readiness of EATRIS to support biomedical challenges in Europe and provide translational solutions for the benefit of personalised medicine.  

EATRIS-CONNECT consortium  

The project will promote the cross-border alignment in the adoption and application of digital tools and help consolidate the European Research Infrastructure (RI) landscape by fostering interdisciplinary collaborations between cross-sector RIs and exploring how RIs can together unlock innovation in the digital domain with a particular focus on AI-enabled technologies. EATRIS-CONNECT will provide the pathway for the digital transformation of EATRIS. All 14 national EATRIS nodes form the central pillar of EATRIS-CONNECT, facilitating the alignment of strategic national priorities across the infrastructure and empowering EATRIS’ widening nodes to strengthen their digital competencies, ultimately ensuring the long-term sustainability of EATRIS. 

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Digital Hub

The EATRIS-CONNECT Digital Hub is one of the main outputs of the EATRIS-CONNECT project. The Digital Hub is a web-based, generative AI-powered conversational platform designed to accelerate translational research by providing access to self-service resources and curated best practices for integrating AI into clinical workflows.​ Learn more about the Hub in the poster below.

EATRIS’ role in the project  

EATRIS, as project coordinator, will lead the activities of the Digital Transformation Expert Network, as an evolution of the EATRIS Digital Transformation Team and will support the EATRIS Nodes (WP2), coordination with other RIs (WP3), industry pilot users and advisors (WP4), and the pancreatic cancer use case working group (WP6) to guide the technical execution of the project. The network will be responsible for EATRIS-CONNECT technical development and will have close contact with the five EATRIS scientific platforms to enable efficient communication and coordination of the digital transformation activities across the entire RI. 

EATRIS C&S will coordinate the publication of the EATRIS Digital Hub, as an open-access toolkit providing links and signposts to FAIR Data collections, cohorts, and resources enabling expedited biomarker discovery and validation, validated process protocols, standard operating procedures, best practices, quality and regulatory frameworks, guidance, and gold-standard implementation examples.  

Additionally, the project will launch the EATRIS’ Go Green initiative that is assessing carbon production associated to operations, vocational travel, application of information technology, and the coordination of events. 

The focus will also be on facilitating inter-RI collaborations at the national level and stepping up EATRIS advocacy efforts towards governments, competent authorities, funding bodies and policymakers to improve framework conditions and to facilitate global engagement through the EATRIS partnership with the Personalised Medicine Coalition. The effort will support governmental interactions in the context of new countries interested in becoming members or observers of the RI.