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RD-Connect invites ERN members to join the RD-Connect Community

2018-08-31
RD-Connect invites ERN members to join the RD-Connect Community

In July 2018 the new RD-Connect Community was launched as an international association of individuals and organizations who would like to participate in shaping the rare disease field, promote data sharing and reuse and advance research.

RD-Connect is an EU-funded integrated platform connecting databases, registries, biobanks and clinical bioinformatics for rare disease research. It provides user-friendly tools for data analysis and links different data types – omics (e.g. genomics), clinical information, patient registries and biobanks – into a common resource. By enabling scientists and clinicians around the world to analyse and share data and biosamples, RD-Connect speeds up research, diagnosis and therapy development to improve the lives of patients with rare diseases.

RD-Connect has built three integrated online systems open to any rare disease:

RD-Connect is open for data submissions from ERNs and already holds thousands of secure, pseudonymised datasets. Data are linked at an individual per-patient level. Researchers can analyse data, find similar cases and related information such as availability of biomaterials. In collaborations with other EU projects, RD-Connect has already contributed to the discovery of dozens of novel disease genes. All ERNs are invited to submit their sequencing data and analyse them in RD-Connect, so if you have a cohort of undiagnosed patients with NGS data you would like support in reanalysing, RD-Connect would love to hear from you!

In July 2018 the new RD-Connect Community was launched. This is an international association of individuals and organizations who would like to participate in shaping the rare disease field, promote data sharing and reuse and advance research. Membership is free of charge and open to organisations, research groups and individuals from diverse backgrounds, engaged in rare disease research anywhere in the world. Several ERNs have signed up as members, but you are welcome to register as individual healthcare professionals HCPs and research groups.

Interested in joining? Fill out the registration form to become a member! For more information about the RD-Connect Community, please click here.