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FAIR Metroline – New and Upcoming Steps
Making health data FAIR — Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable — is an important step toward a connected and trustworthy data landscape for research and healthcare. However, applying the FAIR principles in practice can be challenging. The FAIR Metroline helps guide you through this process. The FAIR Metroline is part of the agreements surrounding the national health data infrastructure and is available through the “FAIR training and guidance” portal within the National Health Data Portal, or directly via the FAIR Metroline website.
The FAIR Metroline provides clear, practical guidance to support researchers and data custodians step by step in making their data FAIR. The steps have been developed by experts from Health-RI and regional partners, and reviewed by external specialists. Each page contains reliable and accessible information to help you get started on your FAIR journey.
Help Shape the FAIR Metroline
The FAIR Metroline is still under development, and your input is essential to keep the content current and useful. We invite everyone working with research or health data to explore the steps, provide feedback, and contribute to improving the pages. Feedback can be submitted via the Quick Feedback form, in a Word document, or by joining the Reviewing Group. All contributors will be acknowledged on the website.
Are you interested in contributing or do you have questions? Please contact Mariska Steeghs (mariska.steeghs@health-ri.nl) or Sander de Ridder (sander.deridder@health-ri.nl).
Join the Journey
Together, we can make FAIR more accessible, consistent, and effective. Explore the FAIR Metroline, share your experience, and help lay a solid foundation for an integrated national health data infrastructure.
We are pleased to announce that three new steps are now available on fairmetroline.org:
- Data access and retrieval outlines how to responsibly identify, access and retrieve data so it is legally compliant, secure and trustworthy before being made FAIR.
- Use ontologies in the data model describes how to link data models to shared ontologies to make meanings explicit, machine interpretable and interoperable across systems in line with FAIR principles.
- Query (use) over resources explains how to discover, query and reuse FAIR data, progressing from simple browsing and filtering to advanced SPARQL and federated queries across multiple FAIR resources.
In addition, two steps are now open for external review on the internal Health-RI Confluence:
- Select identifier scheme describes how to choose and apply persistent identifiers to ensure FAIR data and metadata remain discoverable, interoperable and reusable across systems.
- Organise training explains how to identify skill gaps and select appropriate FAIR and research data management training for different roles within a team.
Feedback on these pages is welcome until the 2nd of July 2026. After this review period, all comments will be addressed and the final versions will be published on the website. Your input will directly contribute to improving the pages prior to publication.