Several Asian regions — including China, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan — have developed strong genomics capacities, significantly shaping global genomic innovation. However, challenges remain in sharing genomic data in these regions. Data sharing involves multiple stakeholders, therefore, this session aims to bring a multidisciplinary discussion among legal and ethical experts, genomic researchers, and bioinformatics scientists from high-capacity Asian jurisdictions and other regions. The ultimate goal is to strengthen collaboration with Asian regions and promote global genomic data sharing. Proposed by the Regulatory & Ethics Work Stream (REWS), this session seeks to identify legal, social, ethical, and technical factors that impede data sharing in high-capacity Asian jurisdictions. Specifically, the session will:
- engage high-capacity Asian genomic jurisdictions and the broader GA4GH community to better understand regulatory and technical barriers to genomic data sharing.;
- present and receive feedback on the preliminary findings;
- brainstorm further actionable plans to facilitate genomic data sharing in these regions.