ISO 23494: Biotechnology – Provenance Information Model for Biological Specimen And Data

Exchange of research data and samples in biomedical research has become a common phenomenon, demanding for their effective quality assessment. At the same time, several reports address reproducibility of research, where history of biological samples (acquisition, processing, transportation, storage, and retrieval) and data history (data generation and processing) define their fitness for purpose, and hence their quality. This project aims to develop a comprehensive W3C PROV based provenance information standard intended for the biomedical research domain. The standard is being developed by the working group 5 (“data processing and integration”) of the ISO (International Standardisation Organisation) technical committee 276 “biotechnology”. The outcome of the project will be published in parts as international standards or technical specifications. The poster informs about the goals of the standardisation activity, presents the proposed structure of the standards, briefly describes its current state and outlines its future development and open issues.