The new Data Liquidity Coalition has identified five activity tracks. Marcia Kean, MBA, a leader of the coalition steering committee, described the tracks:

1. Intellectual Capital is a set of activities that would seek to identify and illuminate some of the key issues in the space, such as the economic impact of biomedical data liquidity (or the converse, illiquidity) and through white papers, etc, inform key opinion leaders of the importance of this issue.

2. Advocacy is the process of identifying policy barriers to the achievement of data liquidity, or new policies that could facilitate such achievement, and informing policymakers about the potential benefits of change.

3. Community Building and Communications are the activities by which we would disseminate the white papers and other materials, and get more and more organizations and individuals involved in the coalition. The Landscape Analysis is a start-up activity in that track, designed to scan the environment for the wide variety of initiatives and entities that have gotten underway in the biomedical data space and to keep track of what they are doing so that we can potentially partner or find synergies, but avoid replicating or reinventing a wheel within the community.

4. Patient Education is the process of informing the patient community about these issues, which have not been well discussed in that community.

5. Demonstration Projects are just what they sound like: specific projects that would show proof of principle on how we can address particular obstacles to achieving data liquidity, and showing how that can have a positive impact on research and/or care, with the ultimate aim of making all the requisite IT capabilities available to the community. ■