From 17-18 September 2019, Dr Kathy Liddell (Director of LML), Prof. Dianne Nicol (LML Visiting Scholar), and Matt Jordan (Collaborative Research Projects Co-ordinator) attended “Collaborative platforms for personalized health: realizing the potential of genomics and biobanks”.
This workshop, organised by OECD in collaboration with Vinnova (the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems), examined the institutional arrangements and business models underlying collaborative platforms in genomics and biobanks for personalised health. Delegates included representatives of major national and international platforms, and a diverse range of experts at the triple interface between IP and data policy, business, health systems.
Prof. Nicol acted as a panellist in the first session titled, 'Connecting genomic data and biobanks with human health – realizing digital opportunities in personalized medicine'. She reflected on issues of consent and public trust, and the concept of the 'walking biobank', where research participants themselves are considered storage units.
Dr Liddell acted as rapporteur for the third session: 'Business models of genomic platforms and biobanks'. LML's involvement in this session was timely, as we are currently writing up a paper titled, 'Intellectual Property Policies and Business Models for Large, Human Bioresources: a major, empirical survey'. Preliminary findings from this study were presented as part of Dr Liddell's reporting of session three.