I work for a Finnish biotech company called MediSapiens and we work quite a bit with data analytics, management, storage in the life sciences sector in general but we have a very strong background with our company in cancer research. That’s what made HARMONY very interesting for us and then we were basically invited through a former colleague of mine, Caroline Heckman at the Institute for Molecular Medicine in Finland, who was in contact with Jesús again, and I think that’s what made the connection for us joining the project.

What’s your specific role within the project?

We’re mainly involved with Work Package 5 at the moment which is the data analytics work package but through our background in data management we’ve also been in discussions with Work Packages 3 and 4 and bouncing ideas off of each other and consulting technical people on both sides too.

What will you be doing with the data?

It’s mainly the analytics, at least as the application is written at the moment. So Work Package 5, which is the analytics one, GMB and the others have created the data platform itself in Work Package 3 and 4.

Is there a lot of coordination that has to happen to make this a success?

We need a lot of close coordination within Work Package 5 and with the other Work Packages. I think it’s a great strength that there are many of us, many groups in Work Package 5, so each brings their own expertise into data analytics. I think that’s what gives us the possibility to look at the data in many more ways than if just one party would do the analytics. Each group, no matter how diverse [?? 1:48] has one or two hammers that they apply to all kinds of data; now we have multiple different forms of hammers.

Is this a big opportunity for a relatively new organisation such as yours?

Yes, definitely so. This is of high interest to us, both in terms of the work being done as well as simply meeting people at these annual meetings. Just having dinner with people from completely different areas than you usually work with is entertaining but also highly educational.

Are you involved in other projects of this type?

This is the only IMI currently running EU project. We’ve been involved in a number of applications but this is the only running currently.