Crowdsourcing solutions for life
October 21, 2011 Leave a Comment
From the lab to scientific publishing to clinical solutions, the Open Access movement is changing the way science advances
(Guest post by Joseph Jackson)
The 2nd Open Science Summit is the weekend of October 22-23, 2011 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, just before the 2011 Open Access (OA) week, which runs October 24th-28th. Open Science evokes different associations for different people, depending on which part of the scientific process they most regularly engage with. One critical component focuses on access to scientific literature. The OA movement has made great strides in the last ten years with the creation and maturation of journals and publishers like PLoS and Biomed Central.
But the most critical shifts toward Open Science arguably are happening in the life sciences. The technological revolution underway in next generation sequencing is enabling, but also requiring bold new collaborative approaches to manage increasing complexity and accelerate the translation of scientific discoveries into desperately needed therapies.
The success of Open Biology depends on the formation of an ecosystem where companies, academics, public sector researchers, and citizen scientists can all participate and create shared value. NextBio itself is already taking steps towards supporting the creation of this new infrastructure with NextBio Public. Another significant development is the announcement by DNAnexus that it is hosting the Short Read Archive (SRA), a critically important public data resource whose funding was being phased out, leaving its future in jeopardy.
Increasingly impressive examples demonstrate the success of Open Science in solving formerly intractable problems. Take for example Foldit, an online game that allows “citizen scientists” to participate in modeling protein folding. In September it was announced that a team using Foldit solved the structure of an enzyme critical to the reproduction of the HIV virus, an insight which may yield new therapeutic targets, and which had eluded scientists for the past ten years. This is only one example of harnessing the power of crowdsourcing for innovation. Tomasz Sablinski, a long time veteran of the pharmaceutical industry and formerly of Novartis, has launched Transparency Life Sciences to apply the “wisdom of the crowd” to the most expensive part of the entire biomedical research process, the design and implementation of clinical trials. Another project to watch is John Wilbanks’ Consent to Research initiative, which seeks to build extensible standards for patients’ to participate in research in a way that ensures their results are available to help everyone.
What does this mean for the future of privacy and informed consent? We will examine these questions and more at the Summit when we look at the future of Open Medicine. While many models are being tried, it is clear that the traditional biomedical establishment, which seeks to ensure safety, quality, and ethical treatment of human subjects through mechanisms such as Institutional Review Boards (IRBs), is struggling to adapt to a patient powered paradigm.
The future of Open Science is brighter than ever, but it needs your involvement to fulfill its great potential. Join us at the Summit or watch the live stream at http://fora.tv/live/open_science/open_science_summit_2011.
Guest Blogger Joseph Jackson is the founder of the Open Science Summit, co-founder of BioCurious, a community lab effort in the Bay Area and the CEO of LavaAmp, Inc. Follow @OpenScienceSum on Twitter, and check back with us for more blog posts about talks at #OSS2011.
