At its September 2023 annual meeting, GA4GH announced 10 new driver projects, for a total of 28. The Cancer Research Data Commons (CRDC) is one of the current driver projects. Newer driver projects include the NIH Cloud Platform Interoperability (NCPI) Effort and the Biomedical Research Hub (BRH) at the University of Chicago. Driver projects serve as real world initiatives that shape GA4GH products and policy. They also ensure that GA4GH products are serving real needs. Through their involvement, each of these projects commits to participating in GA4GH work streams and contributing to development and implementation of at least three GA4GH technical products.

Additionally, the Cloud Workstream leadership announced an updated Data Repository Service (DRS) v1.4 specification, which includes recommendations for bulk requests. Adoption of this update will be open for voting by GA4GH drivers and implementers through late October.

Roadmapping has already begun for DRS v1.5, focusing on major themes including interaction with Data Connect, cold storage, requester pays data transfer, updated centralized DRS Client for requesting omics data and metadata from any web service compliant with the DRS API specification, as well as ease of adoption and implementation of all DRS client and API upgrades.

Susan Gregurick, Associate Director, NIH Office of Data Science, gave the final keynote focused on where NIH data science is headed in the next five years. Her talk can be found at the 11:15 mark on the recording of the plenary’s third day, available on YouTube.

The Q&A following her talk gave audience members the opportunity to ask about her views on issues including, among others:  

• Support for the cost of access to data in the cloud
• Standardizing search protocols as a potential focus for GA4GH
• Engagement with patient advocates in research design
• Integrating social determinants of health in common data models

Following her talk was a “fireside chat” between outgoing GA4GH Chair, Ewan Birney, and incoming Chair, Heidi Rehm, who discussed GA4GH accomplishments and the road ahead. Their exchange can be found at the 55:14 mark on the recording.