Experimentation platforms One approach towards implementing the e-bioscience paradigm for life sciences involves the development of so-called experimentation platforms. Such platform comprises a collaborative effort to:

• Make genomics and bioinformatics expertise available to the whole platform;
  
• Import, use and define standards and ontologies;
  
• Implement software/databases using those standards and ontologies;
  
• Set up comprehensive yet flexible data storage / databases.
  
• Integrate databases and computational models

Typically, an experimentation platform comprises collaborating researchers from different disciplines and different institutes. Together they will:

• Help define standardized and generic approaches (e.g., protocols) for management, processing, analysis and interpretation of (genomics) data;
  
• Enlarge consensus and coherence in the field with respect to the use and selection of computational models and data sources;
  
• Provide access to research facilities and resources including compute power, storage facilities, computational models and databases;
  
• Use generic state-of-the-art Web and GRID based mechanisms to make experimentation platforms accessible to systems biology researchers.