Introduction

Vasts amounts of biomedical data are stored in open databases and knowledge-bases. These resources are intended to provide findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable information (FAIR). However, in day-to-day research, finding relevant information can be a challenge, partly because the data are distributed across many resources.

FAIR-biomed is a productivity tool that works inside a web browser. It brings a range of open-data resources - on genes, disease, genomic regions, variants - to any web-page. It is available as an extension for Chrome or an add-on for Firefox.

Once installed, the extension is active on all web pages. Highlight some text, for example, a gene name. Press Ctr+Shift+Z on the keyboard, or right-click with the mouse and select FAIR-biomed search. A box should appear with suggestions of the biomedical data sources that might have more data pertaining to the highlighted text.

Clicking one of the options will trigger a query to the selected data service. A summary of the result will appear right-away, without the need to change browser tabs or to decipher external data portals.

See the User’s guide for further information. See the developer documentation to learn how the software works and how to contribute new components. The references have links to related resources.