Hinxton, UK – ELIXIR and the Pistoia Alliance will be collaborating as part of the Map of Alliances project, an industry initiative to better understand the landscape of the pre-competitive environment in life sciences.
The collaboration will see ELIXIR and the Pistoia Alliance map out the landscape of life science organisations, including industry, academia and not for profit, and identify their interconnections, overlaps, similarities and differences.
Describing this complex network will help ELIXIR understand how they fit and feed into ELIXIR community and industry outreach, training strategy, and the ELIXIR capacity building programme. Under the banner of its Map of Alliances project, the Pistoia Alliance will use the data to better understand where it sits within the competitive landscape of pre-competitive collaborations.
The Pistoia Alliance is a global, non-profit consortium of companies, vendors and publishers that work together to lower barriers to innovation in the life sciences industry. The Pistoia Alliance will bring to this collaboration the necessary industry perspective, and connect the project to their members and industry partners. Both the Pistoia Alliance and ELIXIR will also invite other organisations to participate in the project.
All data gathered and systems developed during the course of the project will be freely available for reuse by the public and other researchers. By sharing this data it is hoped that everyone may better understand the nature of life science collaborations and the range of options on offer to organisations considering starting a collaboration of their own.
Community workshop, 19 November 2015, Hinxton, UK
ELIXIR and the Pistoia Alliance already started working on the common specifications to describe life science organisation as part of the Specificaton Hackathon, which happened on 20-21 October in Birmingham, UK. The event brought together experts from ELIXIR, Pistoia Alliance, GOBLET and BioSharing to work on common standards in discovering and collecting information about life science organisations, events and training materials. The formal launch of the collaboration will take place at a joint workshop on 19 November 2015 in Hinxton, UK as a satellite meeting of the BioMedBridges symposium. Register via email at community@bioschemas.org.
About the Pistoia Alliance
The Pistoia Alliance is a global, not-for-profit alliance of life science companies, vendors, publishers, and academic groups that work together to lower barriers to innovation in R&D. Our projects transform R&D innovation through pre-competitive collaboration. We bring together the key constituents to identify the root causes that lead to R&D inefficiencies. We develop best practices and technology pilots to overcome common obstacles. Our members collaborate as equals on open projects that generate significant value for the worldwide life sciences community. For further information about the Pistoia Alliance please visit our website: http://www.pistoiaalliance.org.