We created Asthma e-Lab, a secure web-based research
environment to support consistent recording, description
and sharing of data, computational/statistical methods and
emerging findings across the five UK birth cohorts. The eLab
serves as a data repository for our unified dataset and
provides the computational resources and a scientific social
network to support collaborative research. All activities are
transparent, and emerging findings are shared via the eLab,
linked to explanations of analytical methods, thus
enabling knowledge transfer. eLab facilitates the iterative
interdisciplinary dialogue between clinicians, statisticians,
computer scientists, mathematicians, geneticists and basic
scientists, capturing collective thought behind the
interpretations of findings