The Data Use Ontology to streamline responsible access to human biomedical datasets

Area of Science:

• Genomics
• Bioinformatics
• Data Science

Background:

• Human biomedical datasets contain sensitive participant information requiring careful management.
• Ethical, regulatory, and consent requirements necessitate secure data processing and access.
• Streamlining data access is crucial for advancing research and clinical studies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce the Data Use Ontology (DUO) standard for managing and accessing human biomedical datasets.
• To enable consistent and unambiguous representation of data use conditions.
• To facilitate ethical and efficient sharing of sensitive health data.

Main Methods:

• Development and approval of the Data Use Ontology (DUO) by the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH) Data Use and Researcher Identities (DURI) work stream.
• Implementation of DUO as a hierarchical vocabulary using Web Ontology Language (OWL).
• Hosting DUO in an open, centralized GitHub repository for community engagement.

Main Results:

• DUO provides a human and machine-readable standard for data use terms.
• Major institutions like the Broad and Sanger Institutes have implemented DUO, annotating over 200,000 datasets.
• DUO enhances dataset FAIRness and supports data integration for secondary analyses.
• DUO, with the GA4GH Passport standard, creates an efficient data authorization framework.

Conclusions:

• The Data Use Ontology (DUO) standard significantly improves the discoverability and accessibility of biomedical datasets.
• DUO promotes FAIR data principles and facilitates secure data sharing.
• DUO, integrated with GA4GH Passport, establishes a streamlined framework for global biomedical data access and authorization.