A Workshop organised by The Biotechnology Information Strategic Forum, with support from DGXII of the Commission of the European Communities, and held at CAB International, Wallingford, Oxon, UK, October 1996
The workshop - Biotechnology Information: Access, Storage, Validation and Security was held at CAB International, Wallingford, Oxon, UK, October 1996. It was organised by The Biotechnology Information Strategic Forum, with support from DGXII of the Commission of the European Communities.
Biotechnology industry and research is heavily dependant upon information. The information environment needed is facing enormous change, the end points are unclear and very little is predictable except perhaps that the user is demanding more and more say in the way information is stored and disseminated. Furthermore, more and more players are entering the field so that definitions and standards are becoming blurred. A continuing debate between the information producers, users and disseminators is essential if the best use is to be made of the available information.
As a key to looking at these questions, the biotechnology based industry must also provide validated and authorised deliverables at every research and business stage. The information sources used in these processes must therefore be: traceable, reliable, of consistent quality, and be usable and secure. Industry is willing to pay for such quality guarantees, although cost must not be a barrier to access and use. Basically, the biotechnology industry has to use information as an essential element in the discovery, development, registration, and manufacture, and marketing of their product.
Major issues requiring further attention are:
* Industrial users must be able to access all the data they require in a protected and secure environment. There is every sign that some form of "protected database host" offering small and large industrial users access to a combination of factual and other data under the same rules of privacy used by today's commercial database hosts would greatly benefit the biotechnology research industries.
* New pricing paradigms and copyright regulations allowing users the right to use and re-use data should be researched and introduced.
* Databases should adopt some form of "quality control" so that users are guaranteed that the data they access is reproducible. Databases should also adhere to commonly agreed standards for validity, timeliness etc.
* There is evidence that the better availability of the abstracts of primary articles will improve the coverage of the secondary services so that they benefit the whole market. In this regard automatic indexing is an important aspect that should be better researched. A common service for smaller publishers to use would benefit the market. Abstracts should be linked to more databases.
* A stable environment to plan and work on bioinformatics and the surrounding biotechnology information strategies is needed. The BTSF should expand its membership, adding more users, infrastructure providers, hosts and libraries, and increasingly debate common needs and standards.