Dr Spencer Gibson has a background in molecular biology, but recently has refocused to research the responsible and ethical use of multi-omics and other health related data.

While Spencer has a continuing interest in molecular genotyping and sequencing technologies, his time in professor Brookes’ research group has allowed him to refocus to his current research interests. The current research projects that he is involved with focus on ways to represent the use conditions associated with “omics” and health related data. His other work focuses on the processes required to ensure compliance with the regulatory and ethical frameworks that surrounding this type of data.

Current projects:

The European Joint Project on Rare Disease (EJP-RD) is a large EU consortium working to define the processes to allow “big data” to be used to tackle rare disease. Spencer is involved in the work focus investigating consent and control of the use of such data. He has played a key role in the development of the Common Condition of use Elements (CCE) and their use in the Digital Use Conditions (DUC) schema, to provide and overview of the use condition of assets within bioresources. This work is now actively being considered for adoption by organisations with in the European biobanking and rare disease communities as well as other research projects beyond EJP-RD.